It seems like the holidays are the perfect time to launch new apps and products related to shopping. Recently, retail giant Walmart launch its first-ever “social gifting” platform called Shopycat. It is initially only available as a Facebook application and it access information from your profile (and that of your extended network) to suggest girts for friends based on their Facebook use, likes/dislikes. The app will also suggest gifts from other retailers including Barnes & Noble, ThinkGeek, RedEnvelope, NBC Universal, Hot Topic and more. The program is design to be smart enough to understand the sentiment behind a Facebook status update, too, not just the keywords involved. So, for example, if you posted “I hate Twilight!” as a Facebook status update, Shopycat won’t recommend that your friends buy you the “Breaking Dawn” Blu-Ray. It also discerns more “giftable” from others, using algorithms that examine a number of signals, including recent purchases, uniqueness (e.g., a collector’s edition over a standard edition) and the aggregate buying behavior of shoppers on Walmart.com.
The overall goal is to encourage traffic and purchases via Walmart’s e-commerce website and the outside recommendations serve to boost the viral nature of the Facebook app itself. The app currently is hosted on the Walmart website but by mid-2012 it will be an online store that can be accessed without leaving the Facebook page.
However, the popularity and scalability of such apps remains to be seen. Walmart is not the first in this space, having been preceded by Etsy (Gift Finder service), eBay (Hunch) and even Amazon.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/30/walmart-launches-shopycat-a-social-gift-finder-built-on-top-of-facebook/
No comments:
Post a Comment