-
Share this page:
Tag Archives: trusted references
The “Right Time” Web and Social Commerce
I gave this presentation at the MIT Enterprise Forum of NY a year and a half ago. The NY Times Bits blog piece today on comments by Venrock's Brian Ascher about the "Right Time Web" made me dust it off. I tidied it up a bit (but not much). My predictions about the imminent arrival of the "Trusted Reference" model in the e-commerce world were at least a year too soon - I left those unchanged. (Brian's colleague David Pakman also blogged about this in the spring.) The "Trusted Reference" Model for Social Commerce View more presentations from TurnTo Networks.
Business Week on the merging of social and shopping
Business Week just published a piece on the potential for Facebook in online shopping. They focus on the role of Facebook Connect in enabling shoppers to post questions to their Facebook network before making a purchase. It makes sense that this is the primary way Facebook Connect has been used so far in online shopping, since it's the easiest to implement. But it's just scratching the surface. The real potential is in bringing the social network to the shopping site (not the other way around). For one thing, many people are hesitant to blast questions that they know are only relevant to ... read more
AuctionBytes podcast from the Internet Retailer Conference
I had fun during the Internet Retailer Conference this week chatting with Ina Steiner, Editor of the AuctionBytes blog. We covered a lot of topics in a short time. She has posted the conversation as a podcast. Enjoy.
A great case for the Trusted References model
Tom Hespos was focussing on ad targetting in this blog post, but he's accidentally made a powerful case for trusted references. As much as we might not like to admit it, what we perceive our needs to be is heavily influenced by our friends' needs. You might be perfectly happy, thinking all your needs are met, but if your five best friends suddenly purchase new cars, new Kindles, or a new style of clothing, it's likely that you'll consider buying these new things yourself. To paraphrase George Carlin, rest his soul, coveting other people's stuff is what keeps the economy going. The ... read more
4 More Partner Sites Are Live
Four new partner sites have gone live with TurnTo in the last couple weeks. All of these discovered us following our launch announcement in September, showing how quick and easy it is to go from zero to up-and-running with TurnTo. It's also exciting to see what a broad range of businesses have embraced the TurnTo approach to driving conversion through trusted references. Our new partners are: Superior Nut Company - Specialty snacks Dog IDs - Pet supplies Celebrity Seats - Event tickets Tabula Tua - Fine tableware Check them out to see TurnTo in action. And pick something up from them while you are ... read more
Critical mass questions
We get a lot of questions about whether TurnTo will work before we've achieved a "critical mass" of users. We built the TurnTo model so massive scale is not a requirement for the system to deliver value to users or to our partner sites. I thought I'd explain how that works: Sites that use TurnTo suggest to their customers that they join TurnTo. This message is delivered on the order confirmation page, the confirmation e-mail, or in on-going marketing campaigns. The pitch is basically: be there for your friends and they'll be there for you. The sites may offer incentives, as ... read more