Shopcasting is the Hot New Social Media Space

As I have asserted before, the Bubble Generation consumer prefers "discovery" over searching.  When you've been raised on hyperlinks, that's understandable.  And, the best part of discovering a cool new product or service is sharing that find with buddies.  Empowering this friend-to-friend hand-off is the underlying value of shopcasting, which I see as the next social media space with the potential to blow up.

Some weeks back I wrote about thisnext, which is a class act and a real breakthrough platform.  But, the category continues to heat up and the entire paradigm may be the best legacy yet of the Web 2.0 boomlet, so I figure let's widen the lens and look at more of the field.  Today, I offer three more approaches.

A common theme among the emerging players is tapping into "the wisdom of crowds," and many harness group think to help make things happen.  Three interesting propositions are:

Crowdstorm is a site to help you figure out what to buy, by showing you the buzz around products. Users recommend products they like, write comments about them, and the ones with the best buzz rise to the top of the charts.

Another firm getting ready to launch is Crowdspirit.  By tapping "user-centered innovation," to drive "crowdsourcing," Crowdspirit aspires to allow a collection of users to actually affect the whole product lifecyle.  From the site:

"The community sends ideas, fine tunes them & votes for the best one.The best ideas and their product specifications are jointly defined with Partners. Community Investors start financing the product development.  The first prototype is tested and fine-tuned by the community. Customers purchase products thanks to the CrowdSpirit Supply chain. The community ensures the product support and recommends products to retailers."

On the other side of the counter is Bazaarvoice.  This hot Austin-based outfit develops outsourced technology, services, analytics, and expertise to encourage and harness word of mouth marketing and bring it closer to a company’s brand and customer experience.  In other words, they make tools to let you hear more and respond better to your customers.  The idea is to ensure that you are the subject of positive shopcasting.

Bottomline: shopcasting is a powerful viral mechanism.  One way or another, your customers will be talking about you.  Their friends will be listening.  Help them become evangelists.  Ignore this opportunity at your peril.

Comments

[Richard Anson]

There is clearly some exciting stuff going on, on all of these sites. However, the issue of trust is one that we are constantly refocussing on.
With fake reviews, advertorial reviews and splogging growing daily, trust is increasingly difficult to gain and maintain on the web. Be interesting to hear views on how these issues are going to be tackled?