Everywhere and nowhere baby, social networking for retailers
Online Retailers today are trying to figure out how to play in the Web 2.0 world – and the latest wave is Social Networking for Retailers. I don’t know what Jeff Beck was on when he wrote the lyrics for Hi Ho Silver Lining, but he created a big hit with these lyrics:
You’re everywhere and nowhere baby, thats where you’re at. Going down a bumpy hillside, in your hippy hat…and away you go now baby, I see your sun is shining. But I won’t make a fuss, though its obvious.
For me this surreally sums up the approach of some current online strategies – one of the fave raves right now is monetising social networks – I was invited to discuss this very thing just last week at LBS Technology Summit - Monetising Social Networks. And this week it also cropped up in The Economist.
At LBS I was on a panel with Alex Kwiatkowski of Datamonitor, Alix Taffle of Gumtree/eBay and Indira Thambia ex Argos for an interesting discussion about what is and isn’t happening with retailers to monetise social networks. A number of interesting examples and ideas were kicked around but there just wasn’t a feeling that any of the big boys is making it a major priority right now or that we’ve seen the next big thing yet. For most retailers it’s still an experiment, and today I heard about this (good hype value) initiative just announced by Sears and Facebook – Sears is kicking off a new prom-dress campaign that lets shoppers share their selections with friends on Facebook. The other interesting initiatives are coming from niche or specialist online players – I like this one for shoe lovers.
I’ll be keeping my eye on how this all unfolds, but I’m sure we won’t be calling it social networking for retailers in 3 years, and it certainly won’t be a business model as such – just another element in the proposition or experience for those that get it right – shall we call it Social Shopping?
