Socal Commerce
Social commerce is a subset of electronic commerce that employs collaborative social media tools to assist in online purchasing and selling. The term was first introduced by David Beisel and then picked up on by Steve Rubel, and originally referred primarily to recommendation and review sites such as Yahoo!’s shoposphere, and Shopit.
However, the term social commerce has been expanded to include a variety of collaborative commerce activities such as social shopping (co-browsing), collaborative purchasing (collective buying power), collaborative filtering (social recommendations), and collaborative funding (e.g. Crowdfunder).
Social commerce can be correlated with Search Engine Optimization as a way to build inbound links and generate user content, all of which are tools to improve a website’s search results on a given search engine such as Google.
Academic research on social commerce, focusing on the social networking aspects in online marketplaces and the value implications of this marketing tool for companies running social commerce marketplaces and for individuals participating in these marketplaces, has been conducted by researchers at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. This research defines social commerce as networks of sellers/shops in online marketplaces, whereas social shopping involves networks of buyers/customers in online marketplaces and online communities.