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Not so very long ago, it was a momentous event to log on to your favorite retailer’s website, say JCrew.com, and order that Confetti ruffle cami you eyed in the mall without ever having to leave the comfort of your bathrobe and living room. The convenience of it was mind-boggling!

Today, the virtual shopping experience has evolved past simple convenience and into the realm of social media. This evolution has taken the form of at least five completely different shopping animals and, while their names may sound similar, they each fill an important and unique niche in the social shopping sphere.

1. Group Shopping

What is it? Group Shopping websites offer retail discounts to subscribers who buy in large groups. Many offer a daily deal, for example 50% off a meal at a popular restaurant, and if enough people are willing to purchase the deal then the offer is available for 24 hours until the next daily deal is posted. This is beneficial to both the consumer and the retailer as the deep discounts typically draw in a large number of customers.

Examples: Groupon, Living Social, Buy With Me

2. Shopping Communities

What is it? These sites provide a space for users to aggregate their collective shopping knowledge in one place. From prices to products to deals to trends, customers take the reins and share an ever-growing compendium of shopping know-how.  These sites are just one example of how today’s consumer has more power than ever before.

Examples: Kaboodle, Veedow, Zebo

3. Recommendation Engines

What is it? This branch of social shopping is literally evolving in front of our very eyes. While originally on asking for and receiving advice about products from strangers across the web, the new generation of recommendation engines are encouraging users to connect with their friends (often via other social networks like Facebook) and share recommendations with them.

Examples: Amazon, Blippy, Shop Socially

4. Social Commerce

What is it? Social commerce sites like Etsy allow independent designers to showcase and sell their work to the world without actually having a brick-and-mortar storefront. It’s free to create an account at these sites, and users are able to peruse and buy from a myriad of talented designers. The designers themselves are able to network with each other and sell their wares for a very minimal fee.

Examples: Etsy, 1000 Markets, Dawanda

5. Email newsletters

What is it? There are probably hundreds of locally based email newsletters that promote the newest stores, restaurants, products, and events in the users’ city or cities of choice. While they don’t allow direct shopping, they often give subscribers insider discounts and encourage them to venture out and check out the newest local hotspots.

Examples: Daily Candy, Thrillist

Share with us your online shopping experiences and preferences. How have you wielded your power to influence social shopping?

The king (or should I say the mayor) of geo-location social networks, Foursquare hit a big milestone this week – 100 million check-ins and the company is only in its sophomore year. Not bad! For those of you who haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon, you might be wondering just what the hype’s all about. Here’s a quick look at what Foursquare is, what’s good about it, what’s not so good, and what’s next!

What is it? Foursquare is a geo-location social network that connects over 2 million users to their friends and rewards them for checking in to businesses and events all over the globe with points, Badges, and other incentives. As a user you can see where your friends are on your phone, give them tips, ask questions, and download various Apps to further enhance the experience. As a business owner, you can use Foursquare to give people incentives to visit you.

What’s in it for users? Foursquare offers its users incentives on many levels. Most obviously, it’s a fun game! The more check-ins you have, the more points you get, the more elevated your status in the game becomes (you can become the Mayor of the places you frequent), and the more likely you are to win the mysterious Badges.  I have no idea how many Badges there are, but this list has almost 200 ranging from the Entourage badge (“Look at you, checking-in with 10 of your friends in tow! You’re so popular!”) to the All Right Now Badge (“Congratulations, you’ve discovered 5 of Stanford University’s most interesting places. BEAT CAL!”) to the Road Warrior Badge (“You’re making the world a mappier place one checkin at a time!”). Foursquare intentionally keeps Badges and their requirements top secret, making the acquisition of one all the more exciting.

Adding tangible prizes to the mix, sponsors are getting in on the action and offering users retail discounts and special deals. Domino’s recent UK promotion was a wild success. Barbie did a promotional scavenger hunt. The History Channel, VH-1, and Bravo all sponsor Badges.

So, who wouldn’t like Foursquare? Plenty of people, actually. Many are put off, and maybe even scared, by the idea of everyone knowing their whereabouts all the time. This is understandable as Foursquare users do sacrifice quite a bit of privacy in order to excel. Others see platforms like Foursquare and Facebook as a confluence of narcissists at their finest. You’ll hear these naysayers ask, “Who in the world cares that I went to the dentist this morning before meeting my friend at the falafel stand on the corner?” Others challenge the purpose of Foursquare. Yelp, a competing geo-location network, focuses on sharing detailed user reviews of businesses. Arguably this is more “useful.” More technical gripes include its draining effect on phone batteries and the fact that you can’t check in from your lap top.

What’s next for Foursquare? Some consider geo-location a passing trend, but I’m not convinced. I think Foursquare has bigger, better days ahead. Co-founder Dennis Crowley recently revealed that a potential partnership with a major search engine like Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo could be in the works. Explaining the significance of this, he said, “Foursquare would allow people to search for the types of places people are going to – and where is trending – not what.” Who knows if his dream of a where-based world will come true, but in the meantime I’ll try to get as many Badges as I can!

I was excited to represent Gather Your Crowd last night as the best of the Bay’s social media mavens, masters, and –yes– mophos came out in full force at Mashable‘s SummerMash networking event at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco.

A hodgepodge of PR professionals, social media junkies, tech nerds, and hopefuls looking for employment mixed and mingled while grabbing swag bags from sponsors and vying for face time with Mashable’s top dogs like COO Adam Hirsch, Tech Reporter Jolie O’Dell, and Co-Editor Ben Parr. Many people wrote their Twitter handles on their name tags, most had business cards in hand, and some could be seen practicing their elevator pitches to themselves. I noticed a lot of unique business cards in terms of shape and size – creativity practically oozed from the socially savvy group.

CEO Pete Cashmore was in high demand, and many guests opted to snap a pic with a life size cutout of the social media mogul rather than jockey for a spot in the long, slow line to meet him. (We met cut-out Pete’s creator and watched her repeatedly fend off Cashmore groupies trying to steal her handsome cardboard creation!) I got lucky and managed to snag a minute of conversation as well as a few pictures with the real Pete. A soft-spoken, gracious host, he’s only 24 years old and his company already has 2 million Twitter followers and 10 million monthly readers. Don’t get too excited ladies – he appeared to be taken!

There was a great flow to the event as we meandered in laps around the room. The open bar served as the nucleus while the sponsor’s booths were placed strategically on the edges. Companies like Bing, Intel, Weber & Shandwick, Mopho, and Gotelo enticed attendees with tricked out booths, fun freebies, as well as opportunities to win big prizes in the raffle. For example, Mopho, a location-based photography site, brought in a panda mascot for people to take pictures with and gave out free shirts. Bing had a flashy, high-tech photo booth and provided bags. Weber & Shandwick had trays of delicious mini cupcakes and held a drawing for free airline tickets. Gotelo, a start-up networking company, lured in new customers by putting us in the running for a free iPad if we signed up for their website.  Yours truly was the lucky winner of a netbook from sponsor Intel – SO glad I threw my business card in the bowl at the last minute! I should note that some of the sponsors prominently displayed their QR codes at their booths, possibly a sign that the new networking trend is picking up speed?

Most people stayed for the entire three hours until the drawings for the prizes, then scampered off to the much-hyped after party. Unfortunately, we couldn’t risk missing BART so we skipped out on the karaoke, but no doubt the fun continued until the wee hours of the morning. Ultimately, it was a great event and I’d definitely attend a Mashable party again!

Guest Speakers Ann Evanston and Patrick Schwerdtfeger

Last week Gather Your Crowd proudly sponsored Phyllis Garland’s Women Entrepreneurs of the Bay Area event, “Harnessing the Power of Social Media Workshop – Part 2”, where Carla and I met many successful entrepreneurs and had the opportunity to interview guest speakers Ann Evanston and Patrick Schwerdtfeger. This blog post is a quick survey of what Ann and Patrick, two powerhouses on the topic, have to say about harnessing the power of social media.

Ann talked about “Facebookology: The Social Psychology of Doing Business with Facebook Pages, Groups and Profiles” and covered a lot of great relationship building tips, including her four objectives in using Facebook for business. She illustrated with examples how to (1) create raving fans, (2) why you want to go viral, (3) how to encourage referrals, and (4) finding potential customers that will buy from you. In order to do this, she stressed the importance of handling relationships on Facebook through 70% engagement and 30% influence. Asserting influence more that 30% of the time is the equivalent to spamming your friends. Ann says that people hire you because you have an opinion and they know where you stand.

Here is what Ann has to say when we asked her to talk about Facebookology and Twitterology:

Patrick shared with the WEBA group a host of “Social Media Victories – Real Businesses, Real Campaigns, Real Results” through his fresh perspective: it is not who you are but the content you share that will ultimately get you noticed. According to Patrick this is the Cultural Revolution taking place whereby it is not the SOURCE that is important; rather it is CONTENT that takes primacy on the social web, especially when it pushes this Cultural Revolution forward. While some may view places like Twitter a waste of time, Patrick finds only opportunity. Amidst the statistics that say, “40% of Tweets are pointless babble, 38% are conversational between users, 8.5% are self-promotion and/or spam,” Patrick enjoys the fact that “only 8.7% of Tweets have pass-along value,” such that with these odds, it is easier to be noticed when you have value to pass along.

Gather Your Crowd asked Patrick share with us his favorite social media platform and why. Here is what he has to say:

On July 22nd Gather Your Crowd will present to Phyllis Garland’s WEBA meetup the “Secrets of Blogging”.  Join our crowd on Facebook or Twitter to keep you posted on upcoming events!

Gather Your Crowd Meets other Women Entrepreneurs of the Bay Area

Gather Your Crowd is proud to be working with Shastic.com: a young, fresh and fun web 2.0 startup that provides a platform for both

• performing artists to showcase their portfolio in a flashy kind of way that promises to make MySpace and ReverbNation jealous, and also for
• venues to promote performances and other events and specials virally through mobile technology and the most popular social networks!

Shastic was founded by Joseariel Gómez a young entrepreneur who is also a self-made IT architect and web developer and is responsible for the Company’s overall technology and direction. He is also a singer and a guitar player and has studied Bel Canto and contemporary singing in Italy, Mexico and the USA. Aside from his artistic background, Joseariel also polished his business and financial skills with Merrill Lynch in Washington, D.C.  His business knowledge and technical background combined with his passion for music and the arts lead him to develop an extraordinary social tool that is already attracting performers from every corner of the Bay Area and beyond.

Shastic is now running a Beta Program for venues. We are looking for volunteers to test drive Shastic.com! If you are interested please send us a message through our Contact Us form.

Find out more about Shastic by joining their Facebook and Twitter crowds or become a Shastician by publishing your portfolio on www.shastic.com

]]> http://gatheryourcrowd.com/1616/shastic-com/feed/ 2 http://gatheryourcrowd.com/1671/meaningful-conversations-in-the-social-web-happiness/ http://gatheryourcrowd.com/1671/meaningful-conversations-in-the-social-web-happiness/#comments Fri, 02 Apr 2010 22:31:34 +0000 Kent Pelz, Blog Contributor http://gatheryourcrowd.com/?p=1671

The March 17^th New York Times Well Blog has an interesting article by Roni Caryn Rabin, entitled “Talk Deeply, Be Happy?”  In it Rabin discusses a study done by a University of Arizona psychologist, Dr. Matthias Mehl which reveals that people who have deep, meaningful conversations are happier than people who engage in small talk all the time.  Apparently meaningful conversation imposes meaning on an otherwise pretty chaotic world.

Observing the content of mass media today, it would be pretty easy to come to the conclusion that the world is an insane asylum run by the inmates and that any hope for normalcy is a pipe dream.  You might think: “I might as well resign myself and join the unthinking, unengaged, unenlightened masses in the race toward self-indulgence.”  It kind of reminds me of the old story about the lab experiment involving frogs and hot water.  If a frog is plugged into hot water, it jumps out immediately.  However, if the frog is put in tepid water and the water is heated gradually, the frog remains unresponsive until it is boiled to death.

Which brings me to one of my favorite topics: social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to me is highly personal – not mass – media. Yet over 400 million people participate in Facebook alone.  Is this just another platform for small talk which adds very little to our happiness quotient?   Or is it possible to have meaningful conversations in 140 characters or linking your favorite YouTube video of the day?

As I observe my own use of social media to network with my friends and family, I find I am more drawn to posts that have some substance or reveal an uplifting aspect of human nature that makes my heart sing (e.g. “Britain’s Got Talent” winners Susan Boyle and Paul Potts’ Youtube videos).   At the same time, I try to post a mixture of meaningful and entertaining posts which seems to be a reasonable balance between “fast food media” and sharing my deeper thoughts.

Yes, there is a lot of small talk on the social networking sites, but I think it’s diminishing over time.  Maybe it’s just the people I network with, but whatever, I’m finding it rewarding and seductive.

Bottom line, I buy the results of Dr. Mehl’s research and intend to engage in and surround myself with the most meaningful conversations possible.  I don’t know if I could say it’s making me happier, but I do know I find it deeply satisfying – and it keeps my mind off all the cocka-pupu that permeates the commercial airwaves.  So, dear networking friends, keep your inspirational posts coming; I’m finding it meaningful and richly satisfying.

Kent Pelz, Founder of  Self Marketing, a new thought business networking group.

Reverend Dr. David Bruner and Cherie Del Carlo

It was a lovely Night on the Red Carpet at Center for Spiritual Living here in San Jose this past Sunday as star gazers gathered together in their dressiest to watch the 82^nd Academy Awards ceremony in the church sanctuary as raffle tickets were sold and silent auction items were bid!  It was an extravagant evening with candle-lit table settings and a larger-than-life viewing of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin heckling George Clooney on the giant 16’ x 9’ screen with Epson HD1080p rear projection erected over the pulpit, courtesy of CSL’s Mat Lindstedt and his company Silicon Valley Home Theater.  We enjoyed a fabulous buffet meal prepared by CSL members Sharon and Zan Kleinman of Shazan Catering and sipped fine wine. At my table, I got to enjoy the company of  Kent and Marilyn Pelz, Cassandra Rae and her husband Will Lentz,  Dana Hayes, Kerry Smith and Dave DiLullo.

All the frills of the evening were dedicated to raising funds for Center for Spiritual Living and its support of community outreach programs, such as the following:

• The Youth Program
• Spiritual Parenting Discussion Group
• Alcoholics Anonymous
• Volunteer to cook and serve meals at Julian Street Inn (an Innvision facility)
• Weekly Meditation by Brett Jennings
• Heart to Heart Compassionate Care Team
• Visit and Sing at San Tomas Convalescent Home
• Self Marketing

There were over 40 items donated to the evening’s silent auction. Gather Your Crowd was honored to donate our special for the night: a Social Media Bouquet of 5 Hours VIP Consulting. We look forward to working with the winning bidder.

Somewhere between watching  Lauren Becall receive her Honorary Award and Kathryn Bigelow receive her two Oscar’s, Gather Your Crowd had the opportunity to interview Reverend David and this is what he shared with us:

One of the last things I did while working in Television back in 2008 was to get my local Telemundo Bay Area station active in Social Networks. A few issues arose with questions about copyrights, confidentiality, etc. Many companies today are struggling with how to best approach this social phenomenon without jeopardizing their reputation. Do they join the conversation? Do they ignore it and pretend it is not there? The bottom line is that marketing has forever changed and big companies are understanding this more and more. You cannot ignore the evolution of communications and media. According to a report issued by eMarketer, 35% of the Fortune 500 companies are currently tweeting! Yes! They are actively connecting with their customers, improving their services, getting reviews for new products and growing their BRAND equity. Check out Intel Social Media Guidelines or IBM Social Computing Guidelines.

What is required here is a new mindset both for companies and their employees. A mindset that needs to be consistent! Are your employees well aware of how to talk about your company in places like Facebook and Twitter. If your answer is no, then perhaps you should take a look at what other companies are doing in this regard. Take a look at the 152 policies that compliancebuilding.com has published as a reference. Also, take a look at Shift Communications’ Top 10 guidelines for social media participation (Company) template.

Social Media is here to stay! You can either join now and become RELEVANT or join later and play catch-up.

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If you had dominion over every hour of your life – as I pretty much do at this point – what would you do?

1. spend more time in your heart space and less in your head, believing that life will be abundantly joyful if you are more loving and less judgmental; or
2. actively use your mind to master something new because you believe the old adage, “use it or lose it”?

13 (Living The Brain)

Can you do both?  Or does an active mind oppose an open heart and vice versa?  Well, I think I’m going to find out, because right now I am definitely trying to do both.  Tapping into the emotional dimensions of me is an interesting pursuit, something I have never tried much before.  Like many of my male contemporaries, I spent the last 45 years scratching and clawing my way up the corporate ladder, leaving my compassionate heart in the closet and relying solely on my brain power to get ahead.

Now that I’m off the ladder, my interest in the qualities of my heart has surfaced, but my left brain still craves intellectual stimulus.  Is this a predicament or an opportunity?

Honestly, everything on the Internet fascinates me (well, except maybe learning html programming).  For two reasons:   I do like the mental stimulus, but maybe even more, I love the social engagement that the Internet provides.   And to do the social engagement well demands that one acquire certain skills.  You don’t just buy a website off the shelf at Safeway; to build it yourself requires some technical dexterity.    Same for a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter account, LinkedIn, et al.  But then what is life, if not a constant stretch to embrace the ever-changing “new”.

I know social networking in cyberspace is not for everybody, but if you’re as gregarious as I am, this new way of being connected to others is totally satisfying.  And I know of at least 400 million people who agree with me, because they’re all on Facebook, too — 50% of them log on daily.  Only 30% of all Facebookers live in the U.S., so there are still 180 million Americans yet to “drink the Kool Aid”.  Come on, folks, what are you waiting for?

As I move around the social networking groups in Silicon Valley, I am amazed at how many more women are in attendance at these meetings than men.  In checking Facebook statistics, I learned that there are more women using Facebook than men, so maybe women are taking their natural propensity to relate to other women from face-to-face to the virtual world.  Not a big surprise, but there could be some big surprises in store for the masculine gender if this trend continues.  I’m thinking perhaps a major paradigm shift from a patriarchal world to a matriarchal dominated world.   Frankly, at this point, I’m ready to let them have it.  Men have made a mess of things!!!

Which leads me to a scary conclusion: men are still from Mars and women are still from Venus.  But now women have invaded Mars, as well.  Okay, guys, anyone know the way to Venus?