[CRM 2.0 Blog] Will Social Commerce Era come? When?

[Wei Xia (???]

Forrest Analyst Jeremiah Owyang released a report "The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras". According to this report, there are five eras: 

1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share
2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system
3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social
4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content
5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services

To make SNS business model really works, Era of Social Commerce is very important. Without commerce, business can not make money, social network can not make money either. So the question is, when will this era come? will it ever come? There is no doubt that brands are trying to talk with us on the social media. Do we want to really want to talk with them while we are socializing with our friends? This is very subtle question. When we have a big party event, we don't mind some brands sponsor the party, maybe even have a booth with their PR persons. But we don't want the sales person to interrupt when we talk with our friends. We don't mind recommend a good brand if we really like it, and we appreciate our friends recommend a good product if it is really good. But we don't want to recommend a product to a friend if we are not sure we really like it, especially when we get paid to recommend. For most of us, true freindship values more than a small referral bonus or discount.

When will Social Commerce Era come? to some extent, it is coming or has already come, we are already commenting a product or service on twitter and blog. The question is, there are not many companies acively participate social commerce. Most companies are just experimenting. It is a new media, and fast changing. It is just when phone is invented, no body expect to sell product through phone. 

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Posted By Wei Xia (夏卫） to CRM 2.0 Blog at 5/20/2009 06:43:00 AM