QnA With Foodlets Team On User Incentives and Premium Services

We covered a rather yummy startup, Foodlets yesterday and raised quite few questions on user motivation and differentiation from valley startups in the same domain. Here’s a quick QnA with Sagar Arlekar of the Foodlets team, sharing about the team and execution.

1. What does the Foodlets team look like? How many of you are full time into this?
Foodlets was founded by me and Govind Naroji in June 2010. Rohit Barreto joined us in March 2011 to take care of business development.

Sagar Arlekar heads Product Development. He has a MTech degree from IIIT Bangalore. Sagar is an open source enthusiast and writes for ‘Linux For You’ magazine. Sagar is also a visiting Research Engineers at Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP).

Govind Naroji is in charge of Software Infrastructure and Quality Control. He has a BE degree in IT from Goa College of Engineering and has been a part of the IT industry for over 5 years.

Rohit Barreto heads the Business Development. Rohit had earlier worked at a Exports and Shipping firm as Manager (Commercial Affairs). Rohit has a BE degree in Computer Science from Visvesvaraya Technological University. Rohit is a trained musician.

All of us are full time into Foodlets. Govind quit his job in April 2010, I quit in November 2010 and Rohit in February 2011.

2. What is the end game? How do you make money?
Fooodlets has premium services for Restaurants. We send in professional photographers and create visual menus for Restaurants for a fee. Additionally, restaurants can buy ad space on the site. Specifically in the Slide Show on the frontpage and ‘Featured Restaurants’ widget on the Browser Foodlets pages.

3. What is the user’s incentive/motivation to upload a pic?
Users get to create an online portfolio of the food they have had and share it with their friends. Besides this we are currently developing a promotions feature for restaurant owners where they can reward people who create foodlets for their restaurants or affirm their dishes.

4. Is it any different from Foodspotting or Fiddme?
Foodspotting and Fiddme are limited to being crowdsourced applications, where as on Foodlets.in, restaurants can create foodlets themselves or use our paid premium service to create their entire portfolio.
Besides getting to see food photos, users can also see restaurant photos and checkout the events at restaurants. Also, we are working on a promotions feature for restaurants where they can create discounts and events and promote it among their users.

To summarize, at Foodlets the data can comes in through 3 ways
1) Crowdsourced – users share what they eat
2) Restaurant owners create their own visual menus
3) Restaurant owners get on Foodlets using our premium service

5. Why would they take a premium service? They can always have a user account and post everything, like any other user.
Ofcourse restaurants can do it themselves, but they prefer buying our premium service. Foodlets makes it more economical for a restaurant to create its visual menu against hiring a professional photographer and building a portfolio with all the details.

Restaurants are ready to pay and want us to handle the entire process, from creating their restaurant profile page to getting the food snaps clicked by a professional photographer to uploading it with all the details (name, price, description etc.).

We ran a pilot in Goa and got more than 30 restaurants covered by premium service, these include 5 of Tito’s properties and Baywatch Resort. Only 1 restaurant created its own account. In Mumbai too restaurants prefer paying us rather than doing it on their own. We just started our operations in Bangalore and Italia became the 1st restaurant to buy the premium service.

6. What inspired you to start foodlets?

There are dozens of restaurant review and online ordering services in India. We found 2 major shortcomings with these services
1) They focus on the restaurants and not on individual dishes.
2) They are heavily text based and users don’t get to see how the food looks.

We wanted to build a new exciting way to search for food and to network with other food lovers. Offcourse when we looked around we found Foodspotting and Eatly (now acquired by Foodspotting). My mentor at IIITB, Prof Rajagoplan had mentioned to us right in the beginning that the crowd-sourcing model doesn’t  fit well in the Indian mentality and it’s not a viable way to build a business here. As a proof to this now we see that Foursquare and Foodspotting haven’t been big hits in India.

Additional my mentor at CSTEP, Dr Subrahmanian suggested that Foodlets should be charging restaurants by providing them useful services.

This is how we evolved to become different from Foodspotting and Fiddme.

Do try Foodlets and let us know what you think of it.

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Vodafone Sues A Customer For His Facebook Status

This case is one of its kind in India.

Vodafone has sued a customer for posts on his Facebook wall that criticized the company. Vodafone has sent legal notice to Dhaval Valia, that held Valia responsible for “false allegations“, “defamatory statement on social networking website Facebook“, sending “unneeded and unwarranted text messages to the company’s senior officers“, having “heated conversation“ with a “senior female officer“, “threatening“ the company, posting the “names and contact details“ of two senior Vodafone officers who have been getting calls from the “public at large“ and “facing mental trauma and torture“ due to Valia’s “intentional and mischievous conduct“ (via).

The Facebook Status

“Finally got Vodafone to admit that across Mumbai they have only 50% cell sites on 3G. Spoke to CEO (chief executive officer) and CMO (chief marketing officer). Told them that this is blatant cheating.
CMO in typical babu style told me if you aren’t happy with service, you have choice to move to another operator. I told I choose to stay with Vodafone and give them grief if I don’t get promised SLAs. Grudgingly he made 2 months 3G plan free worth 2500.“ (sic).”

The notice asked him to refrain from making any comments against the company and also remove the posts in 48 hours (via).

A case of social media understanding gone wrong? Can a company file legal case against people for their Facebook updates criticizing the company? Where do you draw the line between freedom of speech and ‘spreading rumor’?

A frustrated customer has no option but to resort to ‘hurting’ the company, share his story with friends (FB/Orkut wherever), and even earlier we have seen people sharing the mobile number of senior executives of telecom companies to vent out their frustration.

Isn’t this a case of super desperation on behalf of Vodafone to shut the mouth of its customer (for bad QoS)? Would you go for a new Vodafone connection that comes with a legal disclaimer – ‘Don’t bitch about us?’

What’s your take?

Aside, we ‘appreciate’ Vodafone’s maturity to not file a case against Facebook (unlike several other instances in India).

Also see: FIR Filed Against Facebook in Meerut [FB Is The New Orkut] | Case Filed Against Facebook in India for ‘Hate Gandhi’ Group

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Japan’s Foreign Ministry Opens Twitter And Facebook Accounts

Back in March, right after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, the Prime Minister's Office opened a Twitter account first before launching a Facebook page just a few days later. And yesterday, the country's Ministry Of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) decided it's time to do the same.

According to Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto, the move to integrate social media in its communication channels to the public isn't directly related to the earthquake. However, the web proved to be an effective means of communication in disaster situations after 3/11, which was widely acknowledged by Japanese politics and mass media alike.

Matsumoto said his office will post information on both platforms in English and Japanese. Twitter and Facebook buttons have also been added to the Japanese MOFA website already.

The official MOFA Twitter account in English is here (Japanese).

The official MOFA Facebook page in English can be found here (Japanese).

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Instagram, Meet Your Android Rival. Camera360 Surpasses 6M Users In 12 Months, Doubled In 3 Months

Last week at our Technode Collide Conference, Mr. Xu Hao, CEO of Camera360, announced that the Android-only photosharing app has reached 6 million users globally, in 12 months of launch.  That is doubled from a mere three months ago; on Feb 25, 2011, the app reached 3 million users.

It’s been almost 6 months since Gang last talked to Mr Xu, and predicted the app can be much better than Instagram. And yes, judging from the user figures, Camera360 has already surpassed Instagram, whose iPhone user base is at 4.25million as announced last week.

Developed by a Chengdu-based startup PinGuo Digital Entertainment and invested by Matrix Partners, Camera360 have nearly reached 6 million globally, half of which are from China, the rest half are from the US, Korea, Japan, Spain, Russia, etc. And the number is still increasing largely day by day. Different from Instagram, Camera360 focuses on growing the user base first, then a social network.

Inspiration from Color and Instagram: Accumulate users first, social network later

“Color simulates social interaction in real life. I’m inspired a lot by the introducing of its elastic social intercourse concept. Instagram tells me sharing is the trend of future. It’s still too early
to say if they are successful, because it needs a longer time to test. Now in China, there are many Instagram followers app who copy the framework and operate community directly. I find it a little risky.

A social network, especially photo app social network, should be formed in a natural procedure. Only when we have a large enough user base and large amount of data, it has the possibility to form a social network, during which time users can be active enough in the network to ensure the stickiness of a social network. Different from other similar apps in China, rather than to build the frame first, we choose to gradually advance by steps and not by leaps.” said Mr. Xu Hao.

Camera360 Iphone version will be released in a week

Initially Camera360 only support Android system, while according to Mr.Xu, its iPhone version is coming very soon (note: he also mentioned the same during our last interview). “The iPhone version will be released in a week, at latest next month.” Mr. Xu also took out his phone to show us some very cool functions of the new iPhone edition, including one hand sidelight control, fastest continuous capture modes (180 shoots per min), and multi camera,etc.

Instagram, watch out!

Related posts:

1. Camera360, Could be Much Better Than Instagram
2. TalkBox, New Age Walkie-Talkie, Hits 1m Users in Four Months, Explosive Growth Continues
3. Eight Chinese Instagram-like Photosharing Apps

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redBus crosses 4 million seats mark

Bangalore based redBus recently raised $6.5 million funding (Series C) and has now announced touching 4 million seats mark this month (May 2011).

The company clocked Rs. 116.8 crores in gross bookings in the year 2010 – 2011 and has sold its SAAS product, BOSS to government owned operators in Goa and Delhi region.

redbus Traffic

redBus Story

Watch redBus’ founder, Phanindra Sama sharing the redBus story at UnPluGGd, India’s finest startup event.

Do you think redBus is an IPO story in making?

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Highlights From the Collide Speakers Remarks: Cloud Will Be Infrastructure

At our Collide: Powering the China Cloud conference couple days ago, speakers from various areas ranging from computer vendors like Lenovo, phone manufacturers such as HTC to internet companies including Shanda and RenRen shared their visions and thoughts on cloud computing and future trends.

Some inspiring opinions are highlighted as below:

 

Lu Gang (TechNode Editor-in-chief):

Cloud computing isn’t something new in China, but its definition and trends have been changed with the smartphone and mobile internet prosperity.

 

Ray Yam (HTC China Head):

HTC has been considering how to turn cloud computing into something that consumers can benefit from for a while. At HTC, cloud computing is also known as “HTCSense”, which represents HTC’s understanding and delivery of mobile cloud computing.

In the past, mobile user experience highly relies on the hardware capacity of mobile phones and therefore constrains by it, that’s why HTC spent lots of efforts on HTCSense.com, in hopes of breaking through the constrain and offering customers unlimited mobile user experience. HTCSense.com isn’t just a website, it’s also the mobile cloud computing platform and an extension of HTC smartphone.

For example, customer can upload their text messages, contact details, emails to HTCSense.com, this is an elementary application of cloud computing. And users can also upload their pictures taken in every corner of the world to HTC cloud storage servers and tag their memories in the map. HTC provides customers with unlimited storage space.

On top of that, user can locate their stolen phone and remotely control and even delete secret info on the phone after uploading them into HTC cloud server in case of serious damage.

The development of cloud computing is closely interrelated to the development in mobile communication.

Michael Zhao (Head of Integration Service , Paypal China):

As we already had TV in the Cloud(SmartTV) and Phone in the Cloud(smartphones), what Paypal is trying to do can be seen as “Money in the Cloud”. Mobile payment will become more convenient as mobile internet evolves going forward.

And from Paypal’s experience, Chinese internet users are willing to pay, as long as the service is good. For example, statistics by Angry Birds shows that more and more Chinese gamers are buying Angry Birds for updates and new features. And in the future, more and more new features and creative ideas will base on sensors of mobile.

Comsenz (Tencent) Kevin Dai:

Lots of Tencent solutions have been built into Comsenz products, such as Cloud Screening system, Tencent Analytics and Soso full-text search solutions. Since Tencent have plunged into many areas ranging from social networking, group buying to online payment, Comsenz and Tencent have lots of opportunities of combining their strengths.

In the future, we will see cloud computing the same way we see internet today. Cloud computing will become infrastructure someday.

Deng Jishen (Shanda Everbox):

To many people, cloud storage is a simple and dirty job, but actually cloud storage isn’t that easy. You have to take into consideration lots of things like remote backup and so on. Shanda hopes that whatever client the user chooses, they can have access to their files without any hassle.

Huangjing (RenRen Produdct Director):

Venturing into mobile games will bring up many constraints in the past. For example, iPhone doesn’t support flash. But with the advance of technology, many companies are now trying to build up games using HTML5, which is supported by all platforms.

Also, smartphone took over 60% of mobile market, it’s highly likely that smartphone holds majority of Chinese phone market, which is a boost to social applications, giving user the capability of always online.

Cao Ming (3G.cn VP):

Developers in big cities shouldn’t focus only on iPhone, there’re more common smart phone users in the second and third tier cities, which provides a bigger market.

As for future trends, One Machine will come true, which means whatever your mobile device is, it will always connect with cloud computing.

 

Related posts:

1. Collide: Powering the China Cloud with HTC Sense
2. VIA, HTC, Lenovo, TCL, BestTV, Tencent, RenRen, Paypal Confirmed to Speak At TechNode Collide Conference
3. HTC China Head Ray Yam: Cloud Computing Extends Mobile User Experience

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LinkedIn Opens Asia Pacific HQ in Singapore

After LinkedIn‘s IPO (some say spectacular, some argue otherwise), the professional social network is opening an office in Singapore to be their Asia Pacific headquarters. While we already know that LinkedIn Japan is also in the works, the Singapore office seems more firmed up with Arvind Rajan, LinkedIn’s managing director and vice president for Asia-Pacific and Japan moving here.

According to ZDNet Asia’s interview with Arvind, about 18% of the 100 million LinkedIn members worldwide are located in Asia and has been growing rapidly – “about 130 percent over the last year between March 2010 and March 2011″.

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SingTel i.Challenge11 – design tablet apps for businesses & win S$20,000

A tablet war has broken out amongst consumer electronic brands this year, with the shadow of Apple’s iPad 2 looming large over upstarts like RIM, Samsung, HP and Motorola. No coincidence then, that SingTel Innovation eXchange (SIX) has recently announced the SingTel i.Challenge11, to spur adoption of tablets by businesses to increase productivity. You often Continue reading → Related posts:

1. Launch of SingTel Innovation Exchange
2. Join the SingTel i-Challenge ’08 and win S$20,000!
3. Of iPhone 3G and SingTel

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Introducing the PowerPlug Finalists For May

PowerPlug finalists for May month announced. We have pretty interesting companies fighting for the crown.

Do You Have It In You?

In no particular order, here is the list.

http://www.iimjobs.com

The site helps recruiters connect with job seekers in the premium category. We help job seekers get access to some of the most exciting job opportunities in Finance, Marketing, HR, Systems, Consulting and Operations.

Most of these job listings are not available anywhere else.

http://www.muziboo.com

Muziboo is an online platform where musicians & budding talents upload their performances to showcase, invite reviews, discuss and collaborate.

Muziboo is a strongly knit global community that wickedly indulges day after day in commenting and discussing the music and music related topics. The community here is eclectic that consumes every genre of music – anything from Rock ‘n’ Roll to Trance and Classical.

In addition, Muziboo as a platform offers a variety of easy tools to share your music across the Online world – be it your blog or Facebook and Twitter profiles

http://recruiterbox.com

Recruiterbox allows small teams to hire collaboratively. It allows for auto-forwarding of resumes onto its system from career pages and job boards. So no more opening resume attachments in your email and tracking applicants manually in excel.

From its platform, one can create openings, publish them on social media and search engines, schedule interviews, message candidates, assign tasks to team members and have all hiring information stored centrally.

http://www.smstadka.com

With SMSTadka, we wish create a grass-root level digital mobile content delivery platform along with a robust micro-payment collection infrastructure. SMSTadka.com is an Operator Independent VAS service for Indian Mobile Users via Online as well as Offline Retail channels. SMSTadka scratch cards are available over the retail counter in Mumbai(200+ stores). SMSTadka offers its Retail VAS platform to other businesses, who wish to extend their offerings to the retail counters for delivering mobile content and services and payment collection.

We are setting up the traditional FMCG distribution network across India ((Already have for MH, Gujrat and Goa). Unique feature of SMSTadka is it Personalized VAS service, where in user gets content based on his preferences and parameters.

http://www.findmymatch.in

findMyMatch (FMM) is an online matrimonial service enabling individuals to access  matrimonial advertisements published in offline newspapers instantly via the internet. FMM leverages the valuable content of the matrimonial Ads published offline in newspapers & showcases them online – enabling individuals to search through Ads across all locations, and directly contact all relevant profiles within minutes.

The experience is somewhat inspired by twitter – as the format of such Ads and its influence lies in the concise use of words efficiently utilizing only relevant details and requirements. FMM aspires to transform the current newspaper classifieds industry to come to pace with other classifieds solutions.

Each Advertisement on FMM – is auto classified into its respective religion / language / caste and other category preferences to enable search across all such filters. Further Ads can be personalized with Bio-Data / picture information to further add value to users when they choose to know more. Users can choose to receive regular alerts of matrimonial Ads relevant to their search published regularly in offline newspapers and online on FMM. Once a user shows interest in a profile – he/she can instantly choose to contact them via a personalized email delivered via FMM.  Once a profile chooses to reply back – their response is auto forwarded to the user’s email.

FMM is currently in beta – to over 700 users & over 50,000 Ads. We are working hard to seamlessly integrate it with mobile along with the internet as the Ad content is also SMS friendly because of its concise nature.

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Who do you think deserves the crown?

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LinkedIn eyes Asia-Pac through Singapore HQ

Professional online networking service LinkedIn announced on May 31 that it will open its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore, serving over 18 million members in the region and Japan. The office, due to start operations in June, will drive the company’s expansion and be the launchpad for future growth in the region. An office in Japan set to open later this year.

Leading LinkedIn’s push in the region is Arvind Rajan, the Managing Director and Vice-President, Asia Pacific and Japan. He is tasked with increasing revenue from recruitment licensing solutions, advertising sales and member subscriptions.

So why Singapore, compared to countries with bigger markets in India? According to Rajan, the country was chosen because of its role for attracting the region’s best talent, and the company sees it as an ideal entry point into the local regional markets.

“We are establishing our regional headquarters here to serve as a gateway to the rest of the region, to enhance local market understanding, and to develop further strategic relationships,” Rajan said in a press release.

“We intend to focus our efforts on delivering the best product experience for our members in their careers, the brand marketers who want to reach them, and the recruiters who are looking to hire the best talent,” he added.

Admittedly, Singapore has a much smaller user-base compared to India, but Rajan said in an interview with ZDNet that Singapore’s high user-penetration and vibrant economy were key factors in LinkedIn’s decision to plant itself here – a choice made at the end of 2010, before the company went IPO earlier this month.

“It’s not just the Singapore market by itself, but Singapore has access to customers that have a regional responsibility. So I’m not only selling to a particular company for their needs in Singapore, but their needs across the region, which makes it so exciting,” he said in the interview with ZDNet.

LinkedIn earlier this month went public in what was the biggest Internet IPO since Google in 2004. On May 19, its first day of trading, it opened at $83 on the New York Stock Exchange, up 84% from its IPO price of $45. At the end of the first trading day, LinkedIn was worth $8.9 billion, sparking warnings from Wall Street pundits of another Internet bubble.

As of May 27, the company has a market cap of $8.35 billion.

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China Social Commerce Landscape: Fall Of The Giant And Rise Of The Startups

The Pioneer’s Unsuccessful Venture

Taobao, the largest Chinese ecommerce site, made its first foray into social networking area with the unveil of Taojianghu on April 1, 2009, aiming for reinforcing connections between its customers for trustworthy online shopping experience which would in turn, leads to increased transactions. This could be seen as one of the Chinese social shopping (or social commerce) pioneers all around, besides Mayi’s unsuccessful tryout, a SNS site with a touch of social shopping, founded by Ruan Peng(aka Maitian in Chinese websphere). Mr Ruan joined Baidu last year in charge of the Social Networking Unit after Mayi went offline.

With Mayi’s failure in place, it’s awful for Taojianghu to duplicate the martyr’s failure. The SNS subsidiary of Taobao didn’t rise to Taobao’s expectations. Taojianghu debuted with functions like online diary, album, profile, connections, Farmville-like social games and other apps etc., pretty much like regular SNS in China. But as we recently checked, Taojianghu ranked under 1 million (world) or 100,000 (China only) on Alexa, or accounted for no more than 1.6% of Taobao’s total traffic.

The Rise And Fall Of Taobao’s Taojianghu

The lackluster ranking speaks to Taobao’s setback in social shopping. It’s rumored that Taojianghu would be shut down in May except for keeping three features including Juhuasuan (a taobao group buying trial), Taojinbi (attracting active users with bonus gifts ) and Taofenxiang (shopping experience sharing). As you can see, the lately revamped site boasted links to these three functions featured on the main navigation bar, though the in place SNS elements were hid deeply instead of being totally removed.

screenshot of Taojianghu

“Taobao should embrace all around SNS strategy.” Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba which owns Taobao, said earlier this year. The newly redesigned interface of Taojianghu typified common social commerce sites, featuring functions like shopping experience sharing, items posting, personalized recommendation and so on. And the site is planning another striking renovation. Nonetheless, the social shopping initiative by the No. 1 Chinese ecommerce platform is still struggling.

Taobao announcing the integration of Taobao and Taojianghu on 24th May

The rumor, says Taobao will abandon Taojianghu as separate product and integrate it into Taobao main site, was confimed by Taobao’s latest move in announcing the integrating of Taojianghu and Taobao on 24^th May, which means Taojianghu is officially put aside. Taobao accept its failure in social shopping after nearly 2 years’ experimenting as well as struggling, eventually.

China social shopping is burgeoning

Although Taobao’s social attempt seems a major setback, more and more social shopping websites are emerging. Meilishuo and Mogujie are among those.

Screenshot of Meilishuo

Meilishuo – Female-only social shopping by Stanford founder, whose former venture sold to Douban

Founded in Nov. 2009 by Xu Yirong, a Stanford MCS, Meilishuo (which means, beauty talk) is a social shopping vertical targeting female online shoppers, featuring functions such as items sharing and recommendation. Xu founded Zhuaxia, an online RSS reader akin to Google Reader, several years ago, and then sold it to Douban, a popular book, music, and movie reviews community. After that, Xu spent one year wondering what to do in the next step. Later on, the idea of creating an sharing community for females come out of his mind.

Users can share items they bought online, while anyone who followed you will see these purchases, and you can also explore everyone’s recommendation and recent purchases. By following someone, you will get first-hand information about what she bought and shared lately. Aside from these, users are eligible to receive money rewards if they buy Taobao items which featured on Meilishuo. A common business model employed by social shopping sites: taking a cut from the transaction they forged.

“Only female users are welcomed.”

Another noteworthy point is, it seems Meilishuo is taking tight control over registration and users’ quality. Login in using Sina Weibo open platform, the site reject male users saying:”Only female users are welcomed.” And all register should go through a verification process, during which lots of new users are rejected.

Meilishuo is heavily reliant on Taobao – which is so ironic for Taojianghu – almost all of its item buying links refer to goods listed on Taobao, including clothes, shoes, cosmetics and so on. Meilishuo now claims millions of users, ranking 601 (China only) on Alexa.

So does Mogujie (which means Mushroom Street), another Chinese social shopping initiative which founded by Chen Qi late last year and based in Hangzhou, where Taobao is headquartered.

Screenshot of Mogujie

Mogujie – founded by Taobao alumnus: key challenge is to understanding the female mind

Mogujie adopts the common business solution, taking cut of transactions – mostly from Taobao. The nascent team also targeting female users in light of the fact that they are the major buying force on Taobao. It serves the users with functions like items sharing, shopping experience posting, pictures uploading, items recommendation groups (like BBS)and so on.

Chen worked at Taobao for 6 years, holding various positions including UI designer and product manager. He remarked that, the “growing pains” of Mogujie wouldn’t be how to make profit in light of the booming online shopping business on which Mogujie is based. According to him, the real and urgent challenges facing Mogujie are how to address young female online shoppers’ needs, since their minds are really tricky to understand. “What we want to do is, “ Chen said, “understand female’s minds to meet their needs in the fittest ways while making Mogujie more fun and more easy to use. ”

Mogujie ranked 863 (China only) on Alexa.

More To Be Expected

Besides them, Fangdongxi, which was founded by serial entrepreneur Huang Xiuyuan, Duitang and Paopaojie are all amongst the social shopping heat. They shared the same idea and same model. The nascent market is enjoy high-speed growth, partly due to hot money flowed into the area. Chinese ecommerce startups are receiving mint of money lately, which triggered concerns over another round of imminent bubble.

Being social is deemed as Web 2.0, but we believe that those social shopping sites should go beyond that to stand out from the crowd. Sharing or rating isn’t enough, it’s easy to be copied by rivals and easy to be forgotten by users. That’s why there are so many social commerce initiatives coming out of like nowhere, and some of them had already disappeared – even before the bubble bursts.

Go beyond social

So how to stand out? Let’s go Web 3.0, which attach much importance to personalization and customization. By personalization and customization, what you see on website might be stuff that you are most likely want to see. The website adapt to your tastes and preferences, making recommendations that just fit. Isn’t that the core idea behind social shopping? Help the users find what they want to forge transactions. If Web 2.0 is all about social, then Web 3.0 is all about data and personalization. Personalized recommendations are heavily reliant on data gathered from user behavior.

According to a Credit Suisse report, Taobao has huge amounts of e-commerce database valuable to study-user behavior. Taobao management discloses that Taobao’s platform generated 50 tera bytes (50,000G) database on a daily basis in January 2011. Since April 2010, the giant online shop has started to sell database packages at the lowest price of Rmb300 for a monthly package. These packages are great source for analyzing user behavior to make targeted and accurate recommendation which would leads to transactions and revenues for social shopping sites.

So to sum up, sites with reliable shopping experience, trustful connections, accurate recommendation and profitable business model are more likely to stick to the end in fierce competition.

Related posts:

1. Muecs Trying To Mashup Social Services With E-Commerce
2. 360buy Adds Game Recharge Support, Relaunches Female Vertical Qianxun
3. The Rise of Location Based SNS in China

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