What is social commerce? It's a term you'll be hearing more and more, and it's already got a Wikipedia entry. But what does it look like?
It might be shopping for your favorite jeans online and telling your friends on Facebook about it. Or, it could be "liking" a product on Dell.com to let your Facebook community know you're a fan.
There's a blog that showcases new social commerce implementations and last month, Altimeter group ran a two-day ‘Rise of Social Commerce” conference in Palo Alto, bringing together some of the top players – retailers and solution providers – in the social commerce game. Many examples of social commerce, including our Tag Team application on Facebook and ratings & reviews on Dell.com, came out of that event.
Today, we're excited to announce that we're taking another step in integrating online shopping with the social sphere. Specifically with LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network with more than 80 million members worldwide. Previously, you could find LinkedIn merchandise on the site, but now you can also find Dell products and services! It's part of LinkedIn's newly enhanced Company Pages announced today at LinkedIn Connect:10 in New York.
Primarily a recommendation vehicle, the new Products & Services tab on our LinkedIn Company profile allows LinkedIn members to publish reviews that are then linked to their professional profiles. Here's what it looks like: click on the image below to go right to the page in LinkedIn.
We're excited to be one of the charter companies leveraging this new feature to not only highlight our products within the social sphere, but to give customers the opportunity to recommend solutions that have worked for them.
Twenty-two — wait 23 when I just hit refresh — recommendations have already been received, and with 57,810 LinkedIn users following our company profile, I anticipate many more will be coming.
So, next time you're getting ready to make an IT purchase decision, be sure to drop by LinkedIn and see which products your network is recommending!