Groupon Japan starts a special offer for collecting donations from users. If you purchase an offer costing 200 yen, Groupon Japan will donate 400 yen to the group helping the recovery for earthquake hit east coast of Japan (“Japan Red Cross is planned”, the page says).
Groupon’s Call to Donate for Japan earthquake[J]
More than 9600 users has joined to this campaign, and the sum of donation to be made by Groupon is now exceeding 3.8 million yen.
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Have been hearing & participating in some awesome conversations lately about Social Commerce. Someone explained me this – Transactional eCommerce is Big. Social media is where all users are today, it is already very Big.
So, Social + eCommerce = Social Commerce = Very very big!
Hence there is lot of interest today in products and platforms that are trying to bridge the gap. Analysts are predicting that it’s the next big thing and stating it is reaching its inflection point.
Completely agree with all that. But Social Commerce is simple, here is how you solve it.
Oooops, btw did I tell you that more than $50 Million has been invested till date to solve this Social Commerce problem that merchants can do it themselves in less than 24 hours!
Some key insights for players in Social Commerce:
Existing ecosystem of eCommerce and Social Media is sufficient for building a Social Commerce without intermediation of players who do not add any value.
It will be difficult for a:
Current players who are trying to build solutions are concentrating on building their own ecosystem of users & products – which is not impossible but extremely challenging. Reason being – such players do not own the products or the users (users that have more tight social connections as on Facebook & Twitter)
Unless a third situation happens – i.e. someone builds a valuable middle layer that provides affinity to both – social & commerce. As an platform in this case you need to provide enough value to users (either users from Social Media or users from eCommerce). One such promising player is FourSquare. They add a new value of – “checking in” to its users that are socially connected. Their current efforts are concentrated on getting these Social Connections to checkin to venues – which is demonstrated by its 7Mn+ users.
For purpose of this presentation I have kept other Social Models out -
What’s your opinion on Social Commerce?
[Guest article by PJ. Reproduced from his blog]
Magnitude 8.4 earthquake hit Miyagi and east Japan, around 14:51 March 11th.
Phone/cellphone network mostly stopped in east Japan. Twitter and Skype are okay. Yahoo! Japan top page was always dependable to get the news and alerts.
Twitter users are retweeting emergency phone services which do not consume person-to-person connection ability.
One is dial 171, on which you can leave a message at the phone center (family and friends can listen the message by phone number). English instruction is here.
Cellphone carriers provide bulletin board services. From your i-mode/ezweb/Yahoo! Ketai, you may post that you are safe (or other info) to your family and friends. To check it from PC, here is for Docomo, KDDI au and Softbank Mobile. (details [J])
People’s photos from Twitter timeline.
Hamacho, Nihonbashi, Tokyo
Crack in the ground (location unknown)
Odaiba (waterfront) Tokyo
roof-tiles break down from Japanese-style houses. Nakano, Tokyo
Our buddy Serkan Toto was at New Tokyo International Airport. People evacuated outside.
An insider of Japan’s public TV NHK’s twitter account(@NHK_PR) had approved an ustream user broadcast its earthquake report by ‘his/her decision’, which is not allowed usually. It was welcomed by net users. Later it seemed to be approved by the organization.
(keep updating earthquake related news from Japanese web. Regular news and photos/videos of Tohoku area should be checked on TV and big news media)
Founders Drinks is back for its March edition.
This time, we have two interesting companies presenting:
Pandamian – The easiest way to publish a book online.
NewsAnchorMac - An RSS reader that actually reads the news to you.
Because we didn’t have time to put the pitches up to a vote this month, we will also have an open mic for five-minute pitches. If you’re keen on pitching, bring your slides in a thumb drive on the event day.
Our special guest for the event is a well-known figure in the Singapore startup community – Meng Weng Wong. Wong is an active angel investor and a member of the board of directors of the Business Angel Network of South-East Asia. Wong is a principal at JFDI, an incubator that is part of the TechStars Network, he is also one of the directors at Hackerspace SG. Wong is also the co-founder of Pobox and Karmasphere.
RSVP Now at FlickEvents
Date: March 17
Time: 7 – 9 pm
Venue: *Scape, 4th Floor
This edition of Founders Drinks is supported by Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA), the nice people at Hackerspace SG and SmartSpace.