QOOP The Next Step in Social Commerce
The term “social commerce” gets a fair amount of exercise nowadays. It’s like “social gaming” and “social networks” – used and abused, usually by marketers, to make whatever their current schlack is sound hip and “modern.” The real definition of “social commerce” is when products or items are made to be sold to friends, family, and acquaintances. Sort of like when you made finger paintings or crayon drawings as a kid and pawned them off on your parents, grandparents, and so forth; except on a larger, adult scale.
QOOP (“que-oop”) is a site that, in the true spirit of social commerce, allows you to create products from your own written words, photos, graphics, etc. and offer them to your friends, family, and website visitors for sale. It’s similar to sites like VistaPrint.com, CafePress.com, and others, except for a couple of new twists and updated ideas.
QOOP offers a myriad of other tools you won’t find at the other social commerce sites. One of the most powerful is its social tools for marketing to and utilizing your existing networks of social and business contacts. Beyond just putting products on a website and hoping someone stumbles through and buys them, it offers your products to site members and even on other sites of a similar genre, as well as tools for utilizing your current contacts.
Many marketers and experts in the online field believe that social networking and social commerce are the future of business on the Internet. I think they’re right. Consider this: how often do you find things online merely because you were looking for them? How often do you find things online because one of your friends sent you an email, a text, an IM, etc. about it? I’ve found some of my favorite things on the ‘Net thanks to my social network: things like RedStateUpdate.com, AskaNinja.com, bands I’d never have heard before like Heidevolk or Cruachan, simply because someone I know mentioned them to me.
Given the popularity of sites like Myspace, Facebook, and others, it’s not surprising that the focus of Web 2.0 gurus is on social marketing. It’s the future. QOOP is a big step towards that future, in my opinion.
Fair Reporting Note: QOOP.com is used by VOIS, which owns scommerce.
