In England bereiten der Shopgenie-Gründer und ehemalige Kelkoo-Manager Philip Wilkinson und der ehemalige Ciao-Manager Christopher Scollo den Start des Social-Shopping-Dienstes Crowdstorm vor.
E-Consultancy hat ein sehr lesenswertes Interview mit Crowdstorm-Gründer Philip Wilkinson, in dem er auf die Möglichkeiten von Social Commerce und die Pläne von Crowdstorm eingeht.
Dem Interview zufolge ist Crowdstorm eine der vielversprechendsten Social-Commerce-Ideen:
"Crowdstorm is a new innovation in online social shopping that works out the buzz around products to show what everyone is talking about and helps you find what to buy.
Users can directly add and edit products in the system, recommend them with a simple click, comment on them, blog them, send to friends, and even add to wishlists.
All this adds up to a community-driven product database of buzz! (...)"
How do you see Crowdstorm evolving over the next year?
We are really excited about the possibilities for the "power of crowds" and how finding the right product can be an element of buzz and recommendations from people you trust to influence your purchasing decision. (...)
If 1,000 people want a particular product then we should go and arrange a special deal directly with a manufacturer or merchant. (...)
We want our active users to be invited to product launch events, try new products before they are launched to the general public, get the best deals they can, and help others understand the best products to buy.
After all, shopping has always been a social experience and now it has never been so easy to connect people and brands in such large numbers.
What do you think of attempts by more well known online brands to build up their user generated content and social elements, such as efforts by MSN (Windows Live Shopping) and Yahoo! Shopping. They seem quite Web 2.0?
Not really as they still focus very much on price comparison and they still want you to search in that way. Choose a category, choose a brand, select a price range - now look at these products.
Adding a bit of Ajax, a shareable wishlist, and some tags do not make a full social shopping experience.
Their focus is to get customers into their site, quickly narrow down their choices, and then push them to a merchant where they can get a commission kick-back from the transaction. (...)
I'm sure MSN and Yahoo will evolve their products over the next year but right now they are missing the point of Social Shopping which is a good thing for us!
Can you explain the business model for Crowdstorm, or do you worry about that later when you’ve reached a certain critical mass?
I'm a firm believer in making sure you establish multiple potential revenue streams from day one, even if you will get very little money through them in the early days.
We aim to make money through commission referrals once someone has finally decided they want to buy something and then send that highly qualified customer through to a price comparison engine, auction site, merchant, or wherever they want to go.
We'll also look at general advertising opportunities and look at how we can help brands to communicate more with the Crowdstorm community about their new products and features.
Im kompletten Interview spricht der Mehrfach-Gründer auch über das Web 2.0 und übervorsichtige VCs. Außerdem erfährt man mehr über die Organisationsstrukturen in der Startup-Phase.
Wen es interessiert, vor einem Jahr gab Philip Wilkinson E-Consultancy schon einmal ein Interview. Darin gibt er einen guten Einblick in die Welt der Produktsuchmaschinen.
(via Crowdstorm-Blog)
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