In a recent Blog post, I referred to Brian Solis and JESS3’s ’Conversation Prism ’ where they list 7 companies as being representative of Social Commerce; as follows:

Bazaarvoice - 3d Party Widgets for Ratings / Reviews / Answers - similar to UK-based Reevoo
Groupon - Group Buying / Discounts
LivingSocial - Group Buying / Discounts
Milo - Local Shopping Marketplace (They define themselves as the Anti-Amazon marketplace - representing local retailers)
ShopIgniter - eCommerce, Social Promotion, Facebook Store, Analysis
ThisNext - Shopping Recommendations, kind of like a Retail / Product-based Digg!
Viewpoints - Social Consumer Reviews Site, kind of like an open community-based ’Which? ’ consumer product and service ratings and reviews

Thus the definition of ’Social Commerce’ is fairly broad, with 5 genre types indicated above:

Ratings, Reviews and Answers (either as a widget [Bazaarvoice ] or community site [Viewpoints ])
Recommendations Engines [ThisNext ]
Group Buying / Discounts [Groupon ]
Retail Marketplace [Milo ]
Retail Platform with Integrated Social Appendages [ShopIgniter ]

There are of course numerous other examples which fit into the above categories, including marketplaces Bonanza and Buzzmart . Other authorities associate Social Commerce more with 3rd party social widgets / add-ons like KickApps :

Social Widgets [KickApps ]

At Comrz , our definition is closest to ’Retail Platform with Integrated Social Appendages’, although we go a little further in what we believe encompasses the ’Total Social Commerce’ experience. We have always defined our Social Commerce Platform ’Affino ’ as consisting of 6 essential core elements: Content, Media, Store, Promotion, Community, Analysis

Social Marketplace & Social Internet Hub [Affino ]

Comrz’s definition has the social elements as a core of the actual experience, and... More