Social Networking in Retail

Several retailers have been challenged in coming up with online community hubs to tap into the popularity of MySpace, YouTube and Facebook. One company that has met with success is Target Stores. Target made its first foray via Facebook for the back-to-school season this year. Its already strong brand identity with younger consumers helped make this a positive experience. The campaign helped lift sales 6.1 percent in August 2007 compared to August 2006 according to the National Retail Federation.

Quote from Shop.Org keynote by Donna Hoffman:

“Social shopping sites have the potential to make online shopping much more engaging,” she said. “Consumers are spending much more time on these sites.” Move over, search engine optimization; and get ready, social networking optimization, says Hoffman.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 adds a significant social networking context to its existing collaboration and communication features and capabilities. By providing a framework for the establishment of user profiles and the ability to understand the organizational hierarchy between these profiles, Office SharePoint Server can easily connect information workers and organization members. CLICK HERE for Whitepaper.

Newsgator Adds Support for Sharepoint

Will Microsoft become the facebook of the Enterprise

Microsoft and Facebook have partnered to provide a great development experience for the Facebook Platform using Microsoft Popfly and Visual Studio Express. Popfly is a fun, easy way for anyone to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications, now includes built-in support for Facebook. The Popfly Facebook block provides easy access to Facebook data like the user profile, friends, photos, photo albums and events, all without writing a line of code.

Social Networking in Retail News:

Five Great Examples of Retailers using Facebook

Target vs Wal-Mart on Facebook

IconNicholson: Social Retailing

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