4 Must-Reads You Can’t Afford to Miss: Group-Gifting, Essential Social Strategy & more
Another two weeks have come and gone, and you know what that means, right? It means that this May Day, we’re bringing you the latest round-up of industry news from across the social/e-commerce universe that you might have missed when blinking. In this installment…
1. Social Gifting: The New Buzzword in E-commerce
Daily deals, flash sales, f-commerce – every day, there’s some crazy new trend that mashes social and e-commerce together. The latest arrival to the party is the phenomenon of group-gifting. And the darling of group-gifting is Wrapp, a startup based out of Sweden that has some notable backers like Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn fame. Wrapp just 
launched in the U.S., offering people a way for Facebook friends to give each other gift cards that are stored on their mobile devices for redemption online or at a physical store. Big retailers like Best Buy and the Gap have already signed on to offer gift cards through the service, though it’s hard to imagine that there won’t be more folks jumping on the bandwagon soon. Read more >
2. Will smartphones account for most visits to e-commerce sites by 2014?
Speaking of the newest, latest developments, let’s move on to m-commerce. Mobile has come a long way since the Star-TAC, and consumer adoption of mobile as a shopping channel has been growing at a breakneck pace. A recent examination of Internet Retailer’s Top 500 e-tailers netted a projection that by 2014, 53.2% of visits to e-commerce sites will come through mobile devices. The figure was based both on the overall growth in traffic across the whole IR top 500, as well as the mobile growth rates of a subset of retailers who’d had mobile sites up and running for at least two full calendar years. Read more >
3. PowerReviews Closes Its Largest Quarter
We’d be remiss in not mentioning that, at PowerReviews, we’ve had reason to celebrate lately. Across the board, Q1 2012 marked the biggest quarter in our company’s history! We realized record-breaking revenue, adding 30 major brands to the PowerReviews family including Lands’ End, Dyson, Shiseido, Avery Dennison, Harry & David and Guitar Center. Ken Comée joined our management team as CEO, bringing with him a proven track record of success in cloud-based technology. And we had our biggest launch to date, announcing The Essential Social Suite (ESS), a powerful suite of integrated, social tools, that’s already driving significant business benefits for early adopters. Reason to celebrate, indeed. Read more >
4. Amazon Adds Lab, Industrial Goods Via Web
Ever notice how hard it is to buy laboratory centrifuges and polyamide tubing online? We can’t say we have, but Amazon has stepped in to fill its latest market niche with AmazonSupply.com. The beta site enables professional and business customers to bulk up on things like drill bits and hand-dryers using their existing Amazon accounts. With this latest entry, the online retailing giant will surely be stepping on some toes. Remember the old days, when Amazon only sold books? Yeah, we don’t, either. Read more >
Until next time… stay social, my friends.
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