The promise of ROI and the monetization of Social Commerce is here.

Facebook is banking on it. Social engagement that drives sharing and personal recommendations to directly drive sales. While there are app templates for in-network e-commerce, such as Tab Juice, social commerce refers to the direct and measurable connection between social influences via a network like Facebook and its direct connection to sales either on or offline.

Forrester's report proves how fan's of a brand online are much more powerful when influencing consideration and purchase.

Facebook is also testing a Want button plugin. While the 'Like' button measures a fan who most likely owns a brand in some way, 'Want' clearly defines the desire to own - clearly a powerful data-set to own.

...and Facebook is not the only one. Foursquare enables us to 'check into' locations that offer us deals while Pinterest allows is to curate what we are most passionate about. I can see a time where our Pinterest pins actually lead to a link to purchase, and a time when we all get a piece of the sale if the referral came from our post or link...the ultimate affiliate sales model all driven by social commerce.

The Fancy is already starting to do this. "Each time a user clicks to share an item they’ve “fancy’d,” they receive a URL with a unique referral code. If someone makes a purchase using that link, they’ll receive 2% of the sale price 30 days after that item has shipped". See Mashable's post.

Three other noteworthy entrants are:

Karma enabling you to send gifts right from your phone.

Wrapp an offer/gifting offering that allows you to gift and add onto the value of select coupons and offers.

Gumroad allows you to sell directly to your friends and followers via a simple link vs. having to host your own e-commerce solution.

Mashable posted a solid article on the 4 startups it felt were revolutionizing social commerce last month.  Of these, my favorite is LocalResponse as it uses mobile technology to help retailers engage with customers in-store! Advertising Age sees Facebook as a $540BB hub built around referrals and selling.

Altimeter is also hosting a Social Commerce Conference in Palo Alto this year on October 6th & 7th.

Social Commerce Today is a great destination site with all sorts of information on innovations within the space brought to you by European Interactive Agency Syzygy

IBM is also offering IT and enterprise social e-commerce platforms integration.

In all my years of posting I have never had so much fodder to talk about. For those wondering how social media will monetize itself (and no, it will not be ads) this is it and it's happening fast.

Posted via email from Jared Hendler

Will Facebook Places be the death of Foursquare and Gowalla?

...it's too early to tell Facebook's overall intentions but it's actually pretty amazing that it took Facebook so long to get into this game. Now that they have -  chances are that they will make everyone else irrelevant. Why?...simply because of their numbers. While competing services such as Gowalla and Foursquare require you to invite and connect with your friends, the fact is you still have to take the time out to do so and your friends have to cooperate by joining. Notwithstanding the fact that Foursquare offers Facebook Connect integration, it's not as easy as it seems as friends continuously ask me "Why are you spamming me with that Foursquare site invite?" Facebook Places will not have this problem.

While Foursquare and Gowalla offer services that enable users to enter tips for any given location (great for restaurants), along with popular game-like status features such as mayorship badges for frequent visitors, you can be sure that Facebook Places will add these features before long.

Given that Places is not up and functional as promised at launch yesterday and is still spitting out the error message "This feature will be available in your region soon", many of us have not had a chance to fully demo the functionality, but regardless, this will make Facebook more valuable than ever as it finally makes the jump towards connecting those close to us while out and about in the real world. I'll argue that this will in-fact become Facebook's most popular feature before too long.

How else might Facebook blow out this idea, especially with advertisers, remains to be seen - but history tells us that they will lay low until adoption is as ubiquitous as posting photos and then we can expect localized offers and messages from retailers, restaurants, hotels and airlines as we travel about and check into our favorite places, as we serendipitously hope to bump into friends or meet and make more friends of friends.

Either way, this is what Facebook was made for...and yes, this is pretty much the end of competing services outside of servicing niche markets.

Posted via email from Jared Hendler