'Net Features : social

SEC Outlines Rules for Corporate Social Media Disclosure

Michael Garrity — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:15:00 GMT

Recently, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) went about releasing a brand new set of disclosure rules for social media that detail specifically how businesses can use sites like Facebook, Twitter and a variety of other social networks to share information according to the Commission’s guidelines and requirements.

Now, it looks like members of a company’s c-suite will be free to write a Facebook or blog post if they way; they just have to inform their investors about their “social media strategy” beforehand. It is believed that this change will reduce some spontaneity and limit a company’s social communications to official corporate accounts.

Apparently, the SEC worried that company-related posts from chief executives may violate its Regulation Fair Disclosure act, which ensures that a company publishes all of its information to all investors at the same time, such as in a securities filing or news release.

However, following several months of investigation, the SEC decided that companies can use social media sites as “legitimate outlets” for communicating with investors, just like they would with their corporate websites or the SEC’s public filing system, Edgar. That being said, the SEC does state that corporations must make it clear which of their Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, etc. will be used as outlets for announcements.

Hilton Focuses on Quality, Locality in Quest for 1 Million Likes

Amberly Dressler — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:45:00 GMT

Increasing global engagement of qualified fans in target demographics was the goal behind Hilton Hotel & Resorts' strategic campaign to achieve 1 million likes on Facebook. Hilton reached its goal this month and became the first hotel brand to do so.

Through its strategy for Facebook promotion, Hilton targeted its key demographics.

"By engaging qualified fans through wide-reaching targeting of users who like travel-related interests, we were able to reach an audience who already expressed an interest in hospitality," said John Forrest Ales, Senior Director, Global Brand Public Relations, Hilton Hotels & Resorts. "Not only did we seek out these qualified fans, we were able to also focus our efforts on target countries and regions where Hilton has a strong brand recognition and presence. By reaching these qualified fans, we are in a strong position to grow loyalty and create relationships that provide value to the individual Facebook users and give us unique insight into the expectations of our guests and how we can best meet their needs."

Additionally, Hilton reached qualified fans in target countries through translation of content into local languages and ensuring culture and regional accuracy.

"Being a global brand with properties in 80 countries gives us great advantages," said Ales. "Our global page has become a valuable channel for conversations about hotels, regions, openings, news and promotions, and showcases our position as a global hospitality leader. With every activity, we operate with a global mind and a local perspective. On Facebook, this translates to connecting with a global audience while also sharing local content that resonates with different regions around the world. We accomplish this in a variety of ways including: posting during hours when Facebook users in a specific geographic area will be most likely to engage to using local language and thinking strategically about feeder markets and travel patterns. Our properties do a tremendous job of sharing information with us in local languages and alerting us to cultural nuances, seasonal activities and other items that are authentic to their locations."

Earlier this year, Hilton also launched Mexico and U.K. specific pages through the Facebook global pages structure.

"This helps us connect more directly with travelers in these priority markets for us," said Ales. "Region-specific pages enable us to further tailor our content to ensure it is targeted directly to these users. We localize select posts by geo-targeting certain regions or fans depending on the type of news that we are posting, and share news in Spanish and Portuguese for the Mexico page. These pages provide great opportunities for us to show both our relevance in the region and the exciting things happening in destinations most visited by travelers originating from those markets."

The Marketing Main Event: Search vs. Social Media

Michael Garrity — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 20:38:00 GMT

For Internet advertisers, the main event face-off for 2012 is the on-going battle between social media and search for the attention of advertisers.

On the one hand, search has a much longer, more complete history than social media, and it has been ingrained in the fabric of online advertising for virtually as long as it has been a thing on the Web. This means that search advertising is refined and proven, with many well-established best practices that provide a useful template for all marketers. And perhaps most importantly, search is almost always a major component of any online ad campaign from the very beginning, and rightly so.

However, nothing has altered the way that we all use the Web as quickly or dramatically as social media, which evolved from a way for teenagers to kill some time to one of the very pillars of the Internet in just a few years. Now, marketers use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and a plethora of other, smaller social media platforms to reach out to consumers, expand their audience and intimately engage with users, all of which helps them drive interest and create advocates for their brands.

But which one is better? Where should advertisers be focusing most of their attention? It turns out that Florida-based ad agency MDG Advertising was curious, as well, which led to the company creating a helpful infographic (which you can view below) that compares the two marketing realms in four different categories to see how they stack up against one another based on the various surveys and studies. So who came out on top?

Lead Generation
The first category remains one of the most important goals for many digital marketers: Lead generation. Marketers love to gather leads as they provide pre-qualified prospects, making it considerably easier to market to them and, ultimately, providing higher conversion rates. According to MDG Advertising’s survey, both B2B and B2C professionals agree that the combination of search and PPC advertising absolutely dominate in terms of generating useful leads for their business. B2C respondents said that SEO make the biggest impact at 41 percent, with PPC coming in at 24.8 percent and social media marketing clocking in at 34.2 percent. Meanwhile, B2B marketers said that SEO impacts their lead generation by a considerable majority, 57.4 percent, followed by social media marketing at 24.8 percent and PPC advertising at 17.9 percent.

Brand Awareness
While lead generation is dominated by search marketing, it actually ranks second in terms of the top objectives of search engine optimization below increasing website traffic and above generating brand awareness. However, as the infographic explains, brand exposure is listed as the primary objective of social media, according to Web marketing professionals. So, while search engines may be able to help consumers find you, it won’t help them know who you are. If you want to generate interest in your brand, turn to social media.

Local Business Visibility
Despite the Internet, many consumers still like to do much their shopping locally, although many still use the Web to find out information about their local businesses, and for the most part, they’re using search engines to do it. That is the case if the consumer is looking for information about a restaurant, bar or club, where they’ll use search engines 38 percent of the time, “specialty” websites 17 percent of the time and social media just three percent of the time. But it’s not just diners and nightclubs that rule the search engines, as search also dominates as the most popular method for users looking for “other” local businesses at 36 percent, followed by specialty sites at 16 percent and social media trailing far behind at one percent. Needless to say, local businesses absolutely must emphasize SEO as part of their online ad campaigns.

Interactivity
I think we all know where this one is going. When it comes to interacting with eager consumers and (hopefully) turning them into brand advocates, social media is the ideal platform, although not by the incredible margins that one might think. A survey of over 600 marketers asked them what they preferred as an interactive marketing tool, and social media came out on top at 65 percent. However, 54 percent of respondents said SEO, while only 34 percent said they use paid search to interact with consumers. This isn’t terribly surprising, however, as the nature of social media obviously lends itself to being, uh, social and engaging customers.

And the Winner Is…
…Those marketers that are smart enough to leverage both search and social media as essential aspects of their online ad campaigns. Search engines aren’t dumb, and the last two years have seen a massive push to integrate social media into search algorithms, and it seems that with every Google or Bing update, social has a greater impact on search rankings.

According to the MDG Advertising’s infographic, 50 percent of marketers said that social media has had an impact on their search marketing efforts, while just 29 percent have actually taken steps to merge parts of their social and search strategies. This has to change in 2013, as the two are going to grow more reliant on one another, as well as more integral to the success on online advertisers, as the line between social and search continues to blur.

Using Video for Social Engagement

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 21:55:00 GMT

WeVideo, which Website Magazine featured in its recommended list of online video editing platforms, has released a social video engagement solution that enables marketers to put the power of video into the hands of consumers.

The WeVideo solution provides marketers with an embedded video editor to use on their own Web properties for the purpose of generating (or better said, encouraging) customer referrals through user-generated content which can be distributed on and promoting within social media – and it seems as though it might just work.

Marketers invite consumers to create a video using clips, soundtracks and images/graphics that the company provides or that consumers generate themselves. These video-producing consumers can then share their edited videos, spread the word virally through the social media networks on which they participate.

While marketers have not been shy to leverage social media based customer referrals through likes, tweets and shares - video has been almost completely absent. But there are some instances (examples) of the solution in action that might just be reason to explore WeVideo and its offerings more closely.

WeVideo provided its Social Video Engagement solution to K-1, a kickboxing promoter group, to support the K-1 Rising 2012 Contest. K-1 fans entered an online contest by editing video clips of previous K-1 fights and the best videos submitted won ringside seats to the fight. K-1 promoted the event at www.k-1.tv. Check out K1 fans' contest videos.

TheFind and IE Launch New Shopping Platform

Allison Howen — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:30:00 GMT

Could this be the future of online shopping?

A new partnership between TheFind and Internet Explorer has brought social discovery to print catalogs – resulting in Glimpse, an HTML5 Web site that is a combination of two popular apps from TheFind.

Glimpse combines the social sharing and shopping capabilities of TheFind’s Facebook app (also called Glimpse) with Catalogue, the company’s popular paper catalog tablet app. The site’s layout is similar to Pinterest, but it also displays and enables users to interact with catalogs from big name retailers like Lands’ End, Alloy and Moosejaw.

Each catalog is equipped with items that users can click on to find out prices and descriptions. Users sign into Glimpse with Facebook, and have the ability to see what items their friends have liked and products from brands that they have previously liked on Facebook. Additional social aspects of Glimpse include the ability for users to like or comment on an entire catalog or individual items, as well as save items into their personal collections or share items across their social networks.

“Working with Internet Explorer has been a great collaboration. Together, we have been focused on changing online shopping to deliver to consumers a rich and compelling experience that is driven by social discovery and curation,” says Ramneek Bhasin, VP and GM of Mobile at TheFind. “By bringing store catalogs to Glimpse, we have done just that. Glimpse will run seamlessly across all tablet and desktop platforms. This is just the beginning of what true ‘social discovery’ is all about.”

IE and TheFind also released a free, open-source framework for HTML5 page-flip, in order to give developers the code to create more online catalogs.

Check out some screenshots of Glimpse below:

In-Store Shopping Motivates Digital Interactions

Allison Howen — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:12:00 GMT

More mobile phones are making their way into brick and mortar stores to aid consumers in making decisions during their shopping experiences.

In fact, according to Empathica’s Consumer Insights Panel survey, at least half of consumers who own a smartphone use the device to look up product reviews while shopping in-stores, while the same is true for 10 percent of consumers who don’t even own a smartphone.

This data shows business owners that their mobile and social experience strategies are more important than ever, especially because consumers are using these channels to make decisions – even while inside retail stores and restaurants.

According to the survey results, price comparisons are the most frequent in-store mobile action with 55 percent of smartphone owners reporting that they have used their devices to check prices while shopping, while other popular mobile actions include scanning a QR code (34%) and writing a review (9%).

“Today’s consumers routinely perform a variety of in-store activities on smartphones and mobile devices,” says Dr. Gary Edwards, chief customer officer, Empathica. “Whether it’s comparing prices or scanning a QR code for a discount, brands that ignore the use of mobile technology in customer and guest experiences will miss key opportunities to connect with a large pool of potential brand advocates.”

However, mobile isn't the only channel that is being leveraged for making purchasing decisions, because consumers are also relying on social media as an important decision-making tool. According to the study, almost three-quarters of consumers use Facebook to make retail or restaurant decisions, while half of consumers have tried a new brand due to a social media recommendation.

But this shouldn't deter retailers and restaurant owners from posting all user-generated content online in fear that consumers won’t forgive negative reviews, because the survey results show that negative reviews don’t necessarily discourage consumers from trying a brand – especially if the business has a generally positive online presence. In fact, only 26 percent of consumers claimed that they would avoid shopping at a store if they first read a negative online review.

“One of the key takeaways from our latest research is that brands need to proactively engage with their customers transparently through mobile and social channels – and even encourage negative reviews to be made public,” says Edwards. “The credibility brands gain from publishing all reviews far exceeds the amount of damage that can be inflicted by the occasional negative comment. Negative user reviews is not necessarily a brand destroyer.”

Additional data reveals further insights into the complex online relationships consumers have with retail and restaurant brands. For example, 82 percent of consumers are willing to engage retail and restaurant brands in online conversations if they believe it will improve future experiences, but only 62 percent believe that brands monitor online conversations and just 30 percent think that brands act on customer feedback.

“Clearly, if brands go through the trouble of asking for their customers’ opinions and feedback, it’s incumbent on retailers to make those results transparent. Publically disclosing that feedback shows brands’ efforts to go above and beyond their customers’ needs,” added Edwards.

Google +1 Recommendation Feature

Administrator — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 12:51:00 GMT

Web users want more (and better, more relevant) information and Web workers obviously should want to show it to them.

Sounds like an opportunity to me!

Google must think the same way as it has released a new feature of the +1 button that dramatically improves content recommendation.

The new +1 button feature enables users to see recommendations for content on the website they are visiting when they hover over a +1 button.

What makes the enhancement so valuable is that in order to keep the recommendations more “relevant and on topic,” Google will only refer to pages on the same domain or subdomain where the +1 button appears.

The best part is that if the +1 button has already been integrated onto your website, the recommendations feature will work automatically – whether users are signed in Google+ or not.

The update is slated to go live for all users in the coming weeks, but a platform preview is available for developers.

Retail Pinterest Interest & Email

Administrator — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 20:00:00 GMT

Retailers are flat-out fascinated by the promise of Pinterest and tech companies are frantically rushing to push out functionality within their software systems to meet the incredible demand.

Email service provider CheetahMail for example, part of Experian Marketing Services, began providing some interesting functionality in late 2011 to help retailers make the most of their participation on the popular pin board site and the results, while modest by some accounts, definitely warrant some attention. Perhaps even some investment.

CheetahMail’s Pinterest feature essentially allows brands to include “Pin It” functionality within promotional emails. Consumers can directly pin products they encounter within the email, sharing with their friends, fans, and followers immediately at Pinterest. You've likely seen similar functionality on the Web, but within email it is not a standard practice... at least not yet.

Home furnishings retailer Ballard Designs teamed up with CheetahMail to launch a Customer Spring Favorites promotional email. The email included six products with “Pin It” icons and received a 2.8 percent increase in click-to-open rates, a 15 percent increase in followers in the first week of deployment and experienced a 33 percent increase in pinboard activity.

“We recognized the viral value of Pinterest early and recommended the ‘Pin It’ functionality to clients to help with customer engagement,” said Yara Lutz, vice president of Client Services at Experian CheetahMail. “The emails with the ‘Pin-It’ functionality have consistently delivered increased click-to-open rates and helped our clients, such as Ballard Designs, expand their presence on this valuable social networking site.”

Unfollow Inactive Twitterati: The Golden Feather Ratio

Administrator — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:30:00 GMT

Smart social media users should know that when it comes to Twitter, the ratio between the number of those you are following and the number (and quality) of those who follow you back matters greatly.

Matter to what exactly? To the authenticity of your account in the virtual eye of the Twitter bird but more importantly to the perception of prospective followers.

Admit it, you're much more likely to follow an account/profile that follows a low number of profiles in comparison to the high number of those that are following them back. It's human nature; we want to be around the in-crowd. For example, a profile with 10 followers that follows 10,000 should cause you to question following them. On the other hand, an account with 10,000 followers that only follows 10 is someone likely we should be interested in following.

What social media workers should ultimately be after is to have a profile that has more followers and is following fewer - let's call it the "golden feather ratio." That is just common sense, right? While social media pundits debate what the actual "golden feather ratio" actually is, the ideal is to have at least two to three times more followers than profiles you are following. Sounds simple enough. One of the easiest way to adjust your ratio is to stop following inactive accounts.

Now is the time to Unfollow
Once a social media worker follows a profile it is not necessary to follow them forever. Often we follow an account just so that we can establish a neccessary line of communication. But since social media accounts have a tendency to go dormant - particularly those on Twitter - routinely pruning your followers puts a positive spin on this important ratio.

So what options do you have for unfollowing inactive Twitter users? While it's possible to perform this function manually, many web services exist which automate most of the unfollow process - leaving nothing more than the click of a button to leave a dormant profile behind. Here are three of our favorites - all of which were tested out this morning.

JustUnFollow | ManageFlitter | Tweepi

There are many tools like JustUnFollow, ManageFlitter and Tweepi so share with WM and its readers how you go through the unfollow process for your Twitter account.

Toward a More Social CMS with DNN 6.2

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:30:00 GMT

How social is your CMS? If you’re like most digital Web workers, the out-of-the-box CMS you use each and every day is likely not very social at all.

Web content management system DotNetNuke hopes to change all that with the release of DNN 6.2, a more social CMS designed for enterprises to configure and deploy social collaboration solutions and communities for their key audiences.

"Building an effective online community is a proven strategy to improve productivity and get closer to your customers,” says Shaun Walker, CTO and co-founder of DotNetNuke Corp. “Businesses now have the capabilities to deploy online social solutions much faster, that are fully integrated with their external and internal websites, without the high cost of customization associated with current enterprise offerings in the market."

The product capabilities, particularly for a content management system, are impressive. DNN 6.2 features activity feeds that power user interactions, social groups and forums to increase collaboration, social logins (Facebook, Twitter, & Google+) to drive participation, friend and follow controls to encourage social relationships, and much more including private messaging, interactive user profiles, a member directory, a social API, Sharepoint integration and several localization offerings.

"While major social media sites like Facebook are great, many businesses and organizations need their very own community and social collaboration tools directly on their own websites," says Tom McAllister, sales manager of LRS Web Solutions, a DotNetNuke partner. "We are impressed with DotNetNuke 6.2 and the enhanced integration of so many social tools. This will not only benefit us as DNN developers but also will help our customers get social sites to market quickly and affordably."

DotNetNuke 6.2 is available now and is offered in three versions: Community (free), Professional, and Enterprise Editions. Pricing starts at $2,499 for an annual Professional Edition subscription.

Related Stories on DotNetNuke from Website Magazine:

- InnestoNuke Module Brings E-Commerce to DotNetNuke

- 10,000 Apps in DotNetNuke’s The Store

- DotNetNuke Acquires Active Modules

Search Still Drives Ad Spend, Social Emerging

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:30:00 GMT

What ad channel provides the biggest bang for your buck? Come on, you know. That’s right – search!

Adobe just released data showing that search-based digital advertising still remains the biggest driver of ROI for marketers, despite increased ad spending on social and mobile. Spending on mobile platforms for example reached eight percent of all search spend, with tablets alone accounting for four percent of total search spend. Findings from the Adobe Digital Index also indicated that social, while still an emerging channel, is poised for a big move. Facebook spend grew 93 percent year over year (representing between three and five percent of search spend).

“Investing resources in social has undoubtedly become a key focus for marketers over the last year,” said David Karnstedt, vice president and general manager, Advertising Solutions at Digital Marketing Business, Adobe. “While social is absolutely on the rise and an important channel, search is still the key driver of digital marketing ROI. With the emergence of tablets, mobile creates a new opportunity for search investment with efficiency gains to their overall program, at least in the short-term.”

Some additional highlights include:

- Adobe expects that search spend in the US will increase at a rate of 10 to 15 percent for the rest of 2012.

- Conversion rates on mobile devices are comparable to desktop performance even though mobile CPCs are 30 percent lower.

- Traffic on mobile devices, specifically tablets, increased four-fold YoY, and advertisers were quick to respond, growing search investments in mobile and tablets by 250 percent YoY.

Improve Engagement and Conversions By Playing Games

Michael Garrity — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:05:00 GMT

Have you heard of Fanplayr? If not, keep reading, because this new marketing solution could really help improve your social media strategy, particularly in increasing user engagement and conversions. Or, at the very least, it'll pique your interest in the rapidly growing field of gamification.

Fanplayr is a social game marketing tool for converting targeted consumers to sales by combining social coupons and gamification marketing. It works by helping users create a special coupon based on its "type," value and amount and then promote them among their various Web properties. However, Fanplayr provides more than just easy coupon creation; it also gives the user an easy way to add gamification options to their offers, which can increase user engagement with the coupons and drive conversions.

Marketers can include the social game coupons and offers to their emails, Web pages, e-commerce sites, mobile properties and, of course, social pages to improve their reach, influence social consumers and turn them into sales. Best of all, the solution is self-service, meaning it requires no IT to implement and making it perfect for everyone from agency and direct marketers to Internet retailers to small and medium-sized businesses.

This is a hot time to start implementing such a service, as eMarketer has reported that nearly 92.5 million Internet users are likely to use online coupons throughout the next year.

Now, Fanplayr has entered into a “strategic integration partnership” with e-commerce solution provider Shopify to help online marketers jump on the gamification bandwagon.

Fanplayr will now be available to Shopify’s 20,000 e-commerce merchants via the company’s App Store. When retailers download the application, they’ll be able to create social coupons and/or marketing games, and then promote their creations across Facebook and Twitter pages, e-commerce pages, emails and even Facebook Ads.

Yammer Your Way to CRM and HR Insights

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:35:00 GMT

Enterprise social network platform Yammer has announced integrations CRM and project management platform AffinityLive and HR Software-as-a-Service Subscribe-HR.

The integrations will allow Yammer users to see activity stories from both platforms which will appear in Yammer's scrolling sidebar module.

Activity stories from AffinityLive published in the Ticker enable critical issues -- such as a closed deal or an escalated support ticket -- to be surfaced faster and allow teams to work more collaboratively across departments. The integration also works with AffinityLive's automatic email capture, so that teams are alerted when important client emails are sent, improving client service and response time.

Subscribe-HR customers can use Yammer to discuss and collaborate on HR tasks such as company policy changes that appear as activity stories in Yammer's Ticker. Additionally, employee leave requests are posted into the Yammer feed allowing for greater transparency.

"The continued expansion of our partner ecosystem marks a significant growth opportunity for both Yammer and our customers," said An Le, vice president of Business Development, Yammer. "We are committed to integrating with leading third-party business applications across the globe such as AffinityLive and Subscribe-HR, making Yammer the social layer across all enterprise applications."

Google Challenges Facebook for Mobile Developer Attention

Michael Garrity — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:35:00 GMT

Mobile application development platform Appcelerator recently teamed up with the International Data Corporation (IDC) to analyze the social mobile application landscape, and their results show that Google is poised to give Facebook a run for its mobile money.

After surveying nearly 2173 Appcelerator application developers across the globe, the surveyors found that most of them have a rapidly growing interest in social mobile. These developers also feel that Google will be the key to implementing their social strategies over the next year because of the company’s “broad range of assets,” including Android, Gmail, Google+ and YouTube, among many others.

Google’s various offerings make the company an important figure in the social mobile world because of their closely linked integration with one another; 39 percent of the developer’s questioned said these Google assets are actually more important to their upcoming social mobile development than Facebook’s social graph. Overall, though, developers reported that they don’t feel like they have the proper knowledge or tools to take full advantage of social in their application strategies.

“This translates into a big competitive opportunity for Google – and potential significant risk for Facebook – especially because developers perceive Google as innovating faster than Facebook,” says IDC’s VP of Mobile & Connected Consumer Platforms Scott Ellison.

Unfortunately, it’s not all great news for Google. The survey also reveals that Android is seeing waning interest from developers because of its continued fragmentation, effectively propelling iOS much further ahead in terms of developer attention.

Meanwhile, HTML5 appears to be moving to the center stage with both pure mobile browser apps and hybrid apps, making it a new challenger to the long dominant native apps that have pretty much always ruled the mobile development arena.

ShopIgniter Fires Up for the Retail Enterprise

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:30:00 GMT

There has been some serious discussion lately about the viability of Facebook-related commerce. To get caught up, read WM's post Solving the Facebook Merchant Exodus.

Whether you're a believer now in f-commerce or not, it's hard to imagine the social network without an e-commerce component in the future. One of the reasons many larger retailers and brands have been hesitant (and which may be preventing broader adoption) is related to the issue of security. Gradually, merchants are seeing solutions emerge that slowly address the issue. Case in point, social commerce software ShopIgniter announced the availability of an enterprise-scale platform last week designed specifically for Internet retailers.

The social commerce platform from ShopIgniter is one of the first solutions to deliver an "integrated" set of e-commerce experiences, including Group Gifting and seamless Facebook purchases, but it doesn't stop there. The offering is wrapped in a technology infrastructure that offers full integration with existing retail software systems and more importantly addresses the rigorous security requirements of businesses. Retailers including Levi's, Target, Nike Golf, Kaenon and others have sophisticated technology requirements for their commerce operations, particularly PCI Level 1 certification.

"Customers expect, and brands demand, the same level of security and confidence when buying through social channels as they do on their eCommerce stores," says Matt Compton, CEO of ShopIgniter. "By adding PCI Level 1 certification to our Social Commerce Platform, we're proud to offer brands and retailers the most complete social commerce offering on the market, with peace of mind that their transactions and data are completely secure."

Security is certainly important to big name retailers, but it’s the features that will likely drive usage long term. The highlight of the platform for many merchants is sure to be the group gifting capabilities. The system uses Facebook's built-in friend lists and messages to coordinate a unique, social purchasing flow -- and then processes multiple contributions for a single transaction. What will separate f-commerce solution providers from one another is in the ability to create a variety of experiences for their users. In addition to group gifting, SI clients can create programs for new product launches, special offers for key customers, flash/private sales and even seasonal and holiday collections.