TheYanec – Yaniv Yaakubovich

Today’s edition includes some interesting items about the SEC and Groupon, MasterCard moving its Marker Place to Facebook and an unusual use of personal data.

1. Selling on Facebook works—for some (Internet Retailer)
2. At its core, social commerce is about providing consumers with a meaningful experience and then giving them the opportunity and tools to share that experience with others.” (The psychology of social commerce on ClickZ)
3. WalmartLabs is building big data tools — and will then open source them  (GigaOm).
4. Is Social Loyalty the Next Big Thing in Social Commerce? 500Friends & $4.5M Thinks So (Social Commerce Today)
5. Pinterest
   1. Possible usages for Pinterest’s data in “Pinterest, we’ve got a business model for you” (Baynot’s CTO in Giga Om)
   2. Flash Sales Giant Gilt To Offer Special Discounts To Pinterest Pinners (TechCrunch)
   3. An interesting post that tries to answer: How much does Pinterest actually make? (Giga Om)
6. INFOGRAPHIC: Facebook Posts Spur Online Shopping (All Facebook)
7. The Search for the Google of the Social Graph (Op Ed in Wired)
8. MasterCard MarketPlace is moving to Facebook (Internet Retailer)
9. Bazzarvoice’s latest Conversion Index reveals some interesting insights about the similarities and differences in the social activity between online and offline users (bazzarvoice blog)
10. SEC may start Groupon investigation (Om Malik)
11. Slightly off topic: Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica, documented every digital aspect of his life from emails, through phone calls to key strokes (!). He now shares it all in a blog post The Personal Analytics of My Life. It shows the amazing power of personal data.

Last week’s newsletter was skipped as I attended SXSW in Austin. Also known as South By, it’s a conference with 3 different parts – interactive, music and film. The interactive part grew to be one of the most popular technology conferences.

The very successful launch of twitter in the 2007 conference and Foursquare in 2009 made it an attractive place to launch new products. See also Mashable post about successful launch in SXSW.

Most of the buzz this year was around apps that combine social, local and mobile (or SoLoMo) like Highlight , Glancee and Sonar. While these apps are very useful in introducing new people to each during conferences, they might be less relevant out of the conference. Another challenge to these apps, and to many others, is the fast battery drain.

Over all, it was a fun combination of great (and some boring) talks and panels, very interesting people, too many marketing campaigns, and many apps.

1. (more) SXSW Interactive
   1. Fashion
      1. This is a popular market for social commerce including lyst and polyvore and Pinterest. Many panels were about social commerce and fashion. Examples: Who Needs a Fashion Cycle? I’ve Got Social Media, Social Shopping: The Zeros & Ones Changing Fashion.
      2. A new addition to the conference is Style X – a showcase for designers.
   2. What If the Real ‘Winner’ of SXSW Was… AmEx? (360i’s David Berkowitz @AdAge)
   3. Watch Isis In Action at SXSW 2012 (IPG Lab blog)
   4. Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff writes a good summary of his experience Nothing You Expect, Everything You Need
   5. Sam Shrauger presented PayPal’s digital wallet in a the session. Why a Mobile Wallet Isn’t Going to Be Enough. You can also watch a behind the scene demo on the eBay Ink blog
   6. Why Highlight Wasn’t A Breakout Success At SXSW (TechCrunch)
2. Amex launching coupons using twitter
3. 1. American Express transforms Twitter hashtags into savings for cardholders (Venture Beat)
   2. Opinion: AMEX’s new Twitter integration is “brilliant” marketing (Venture Beat)
   3. AMEX Tweet for Dollars Campaign Garners Early Success (Social Commerce Today)
4. How Walmart Wants To Leapfrog Over Amazon. A video interview with the manager of @walmartlabs (TechCrunch)
5. 5 Reasons Why Your Facebook Store Might Be Struggling (Tech Crunch)
6. Facebook’s guide to Offers (Facebook)
7. Friends as influencers
8. 1. How Content Is Really Shared: Close Friends, Not ‘Influencers’ (Ad Age)
   2. And the great big future of advertising is … a Tupperware party (Giga Om)
9. Zappos TweetWall Focuses on Real-Time Product Discovery (Social Commerce Today)
10. Facebook enhances the apps. Adding locations, photo uploads and more (Venture Beat)
11. Skimlinks, the company used by Pintereset for content monetization is launching a new API for publishers (TechCrunch)

Every other week I send a newsletter with some highlights about social commerce to a group of my colleagues.

The debate about the real value of Facebook commerce was the main news item in social commerce this week.

1. Does F-Commerce really work? A debate following the closing of 4 Facebook stores
   1. Gap, Nordstrom, J.C. Penny, Gamestop Close Facebook Storefronts (Bloomberg)
   2. 8th Bridge CEO response to Bloomber’s story (8thbridge blog)
   3. Is F-Commerce “Fail” Commerce? (Get Elastic)
   4. Infographic: Why People Aren’t Buying Much On Facebook Yet
   5. Stop Trying to Make F-Commerce Happen (PandoDaily)
2. Social gifts
   1. Split(able) Passes the Electronic Hat on Group Purchases (Pando Daily)
   2. Karma lets you send gifts by phone to Facebook friends (GigaOm, TechCrunch)
3. Facebook introduced a set of initiatives for mobile web including HTML5 and carrier billing (Wired, GigaOm)
4. Payvment, an f-commerce platform, launched a social dashboard for merchants (Payvment’s blog)
5. Early Success Stories: Timeline Apps and Open Graph (Facebook developers blog)
6. Facebook opens up Open Graph targeting options (Inside Facebook)
7. Pinterest
   1. Pinterest not a pirate anymore, helps site owners disable pins (VentureBeat)
   2. The Fancy is a Pinterest competitor with very interesting numbers (Venture Beat, GigaOm)
8. How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did – Forbes’ Kashmir Hill on the implications of consumers data. Following an NYTimes article
9. Fan based promotion for a digital good product: The More Facebook Friends You Have, The Less You Pay To Watch This Film (All Facebook)

Color newspaper, originally uploaded by yanec.

Every other week I send a newsletter with some highlights about social commerce to a group of my colleagues. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Two stories open the newsletter with Valentine’s Day context, and somewhat weak commerce context.

• Look at the link http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/09/awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww/ (Instagram Founder’s Girlfriend Learns How To Code For V-Day, Builds Lovestagram)
• Facebook Data Team Ranks Songs Most Popular When Relationship Status Changes

And to the actual newsletter:

1. Don’t put your interest ahead of your customers’ interests. In two separate but similar stories this week, Path and Pinterest received a lot of criticism from users for using users’ data in questionable ways. GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram offers Lessons from Path and Pinterest: Tell users everything
   1. Path
      1. The original post Path uploads your entire address book without your permission
      2. Michael Arrington: Hey Path Just Nuke All The Data
      3. Update: After 2 days of bad press, Path apologized and deleted all the data (All Things D)
   2. Pinterest
      1. NYTimes’ Bits – Is Pinterest Already Making Money, Quietly
2. Gumroad Turns Any Link Into A Payment System (Techcrunch)
3. Will you count 100 unit a store? Unilever does – Unilever turns to pop-up f-commerce for brand launches brand building (Social Commerce Today)
4. Facebook Starts Turning Listen, Read, and Watch Stories Into Ads (Techcrunch)
5. A look at @walmartlabs (Video on All Things D)
6. Surprise! Location App Highlight Actually Creates Serendipity (techcrunch)
7. Facebook lets Open Graph apps publish to past points on Timeline (Inside Facebook)
8. Personalized eCommerce – two views
   1. Leena Rao: The Ecommerce Revolution Is All About You (techcrunch)
   2. Nir Eyal: Personalized eCommerce Is Already Here, You Just Don’t Recognize It (techcrunch)
9. Sarah Lacy: Fab Isn’t an Ecommerce Company; It’s a Content Company with Sales (Pando Daily)

Every other week I send a newsletter with some highlights about social commerce to a group of my colleagues.

1. Facebook changed its Auth dialog box. Launching the Improved Auth Dialog
2. Swedish social gifting company Wrapp receives a new $5M round of funding
3. An example of FB Actions – Payvment Tells Facebook Friends What You Want, Own
4. Polyvore Raises $14M–
   1. Polyvore is a community fashion site that allows users to create sets of product they like.
   2. These products sets are used as a platform for advertising for the sites highly engaged user base.
   3. Pinterest (see item #5) which launched lately can be viewed as an extension of Polyvore
5. Pinterest
   1. Hitwise Pins Pinterest to Pinboard of Top Social Networking Sites (Search Engine Watch)
   2. Pinterest: A Beginner’s Guide to the Hot New Social Network (Mashable)
   3. 13 Tips and Tricks for Cutting Edge Users (Mashable)
   4. Chobani yogurt is a good example of a brand usage of Pinterest (FastCompany)
   5. Opposite view: 7 Reasons Why Pinterest Isn’t Yet Ready for Tech Brands (techcrunch)
   6. Mulu.me Charity focused competitor for Pinterest (All Things D)
6. Talking to strangers (Millennials will change the way you sell)
7. Paying usersfor postings and promoting products:
   1. PowerVoice Pays Users To Post Ads On Twitter, Facebook (All Things D)
   2. Endorse – paying users for social media posts that led to transactions Accel And SV Angel Back Endorse With $4.25 Million To Close The Loop Between Shoppers And Brands (bazzarvoice)
8. MicroStrategy bets big on Facebook data (techcrunch)
9. #Bashtag – McDonald’s launched a new twitter campaign last week using the tag #McDStories. It quickly turned into a social media nightmare for the company with users from around the world posting bad McDonald’s experiences and using #McDStories (Forbes)