In The News | 8thBridge | Social Commerce Platform

8thBridge Unveils Social Commerce Platform That Links Social Identity With Product Interest

Minneapolis, May 30, 2013 – 8thBridge® today launched a major release of its social commerce platform, 8thBridge Graphite™, during a live event. Graphite 3 unlocks the value within social graph data and provides brands an entirely new way to connect with and understand people. “Graphite 3 lets brands see their customers as people instead of just consumers for their products – because people are more than what they buy,” said Wade Gerten , Founder & CEO of 8thBridge.

Even after investing millions of dollars in tracking technology and building massive consumer databases, most marketers still know very little about who their customers really are and what they care about.

Meanwhile, over a billion people have been busy creating a rich and complete social identity for themselves – expressing what they care about with the people they care about on Facebook and other social networks. Brands can now be much more relevant to their customers by linking a customer’s social identity with an explicit understanding of their product interests with Graphite 3.

Facebook Commerce Platform 8thBridge Graphite Integrated With EBay’s GSI Commerce

Social commerce platform 8thBridge Graphite from 8thBridge is now fully integrated with the Web store, technology, marketing services, and agency services of eBay-owned GSI Commerce, the two companies announced.

The addition of social commerce technology from 8thBridge will allow GSI Commerce clients to:

Better engage with their customers and brand advocates.
Build immediate and long-term communal value to drive loyalty.
Use social media as a direct and indirect sales channel.
Access rich social media insights.

GSI Links With 8thBridge

The digital firm 8thBridge, which launched its Graphite platform in April with enhanced social action buttons, has the potential to take social commerce mainstream — thanks to a partnership with GSI Commerce.

Interview: GSI Commerce talks new social graph partnership with 8thBridge

Two years ago GSI Commerce was acquired by eBay for a very good reason: The Pennsylvania-based start-up specialized in streamlining e-commerce for big clients like Toys ‘R’ Us, Dick’s Sporting Goods and American Eagle. GSI Commerce would be an asset to the e-commerce giant.

This morning GSI Commerce announced a partnership with the social commerce company 8th Bridge. Starting today, GSI Commerce clients will be able to use 8th Bridge’s integrated social graph Graphite to better understand how their consumers behave online. We spoke with GSI Commerce Chief Strategy Officer Reuben Hendell about how the new partnership will benefit current clients and why social graphs are so popular today.

eBay Delivers Graphite’s Social Features to GSI Commerce Clients

eBay’s platform for large merchants and brands has integrated with a social commerce platform to help its clients offer social features on their websites. GSI Commerce has integrated the 8thBridge Graphite social platform with its webstore technology so that GSI clients can use Graphite’s social features on their websites to drive engagement and monetize and track social commerce.

8thBridge Helps eBay’s GSI Monetize Social

eBay’s GSI Commerce has partnered with social commerce software company 8thBridge to help brands monetize data from more than one billion consumers on the social graph.

By integrating 8thBridge Graphite throughout GSI’s webstore technology, marketing services products, and agency services, merchants are now able to track consumers. With powerful analytics, the software integration should help merchants better engage customers and brand advocates, harvest social data insights, and convert social activity into direct and in-direct sales.

eBay’s GSI Commerce Selects 8thBridge to Drive Social Commerce

Today GSI Commerce and 8thBridge announced a partnership to provide an integrated social commerce solution to their customer base of over 500 clients and an estimated one billion shoppers. This is a major industry milestone for social commerce and 8thBridge!

GSI Commerce processes over $4B in gross merchandise value and services hundreds of the world’s largest ecommerce operations including Aeropostale, Toys”R”Us, Bath & Body Works, Dick’s Sporting Goods, National Football League, Estee Lauder, Sports Authority, Levis, Ralph Lauren and many more. GSI will be reselling the 8thBridge Graphite social commerce platform to their clients.

We are pleased that GSI selected 8thBridge after a thorough analysis of the social commerce space. Reuben Hendell, Chief Strategy Officer for GSI, stated that they found 8thBridge to be “the only company to have cracked the social commerce code.”

The turnkey solution, available to GSI clients today, integrates 8thBridge Graphite with a number of GSI solutions. Those solutions include Webstore for ecommerce, eDialog for email marketing, Fetchback for retargeted advertising, and Clearsaleing for attribution analytics.

The integrated offering makes it very easy for GSI’s clients to create social shopping experiences on their websites and then monetize the social data produced with their existing marketing systems. To give just one example, a customer identified as highly influential by 8thBridge’s technology could be presented with rewards for referring friends on the ecommerce site, on Facebook, on publisher websites as well as email.

This is a long-term strategic partnership for both GSI and us at 8thBridge. We are in the process of evaluating broader future integrations including Magento to support ecommerce businesses of all sizes, PepperJam for social reward payment processing, and MBS for database marketing.

The social integrations we’ve completed so far with GSI and the future possibilities are important because this is the primary way brands will be able to monetize social media. Social is more than just a channel, it needs to be integrated with existing channels and systems in order to drive meaningful value.

8thBridge, Facebook, Pinterest, and other innovative companies have brought social commerce a long way since the initial hype bubble popped 12 months ago. Social commerce has migrated from social network websites to ecommerce sites and traversed from the top of the purchasing funnel to the bottom. Increased traffic, increased average order value, and conversion rate lifts are now the result of a great website social experience that incorporates social sharing, curation, crowd-sourced product discovery, social rewards, and the use of social data to grow customer relationships.

We are looking forward to working with the GSI team to enable social commerce for their clients. Over the coming months, a billion additional customers will be given the opportunity to shop with each other on their favorite ecommerce sites, discover new ideas from people with similar interests, get rewards for wielding their influence and receive far more relevant offers from brands.

8thBridge Social Commerce IQ Report by the Numbers

Social Commerce Today, Dec 14, 2012

This post builds on my colleague Paul Marsden’s excellent treatise on the second annual Social Commerce IQ report of 25 top retailers published by social commerce platform provider 8thBridge.

In his post, Paul hones in on commentary by Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, so I’ll refrain from adding my two cents and instead focus on the report’s statistical findings and analysis.

First, the study revealed a number of new best practices as compared to the 2011 version, including an extended focus beyond simply increasing a presence within social networks to creating richer social shopping experiences that are directly integrated with, and driven from, ecommerce sites.

Social Commerce Today

Facebook Favorite Fab.com Tops 8thBridge Social Commerce IQ 25 List

AllFacebook, 12/11/12

Social commerce firm 8thBridge announced the results of its second annual Social Commerce IQ report, and Facebook favorite Fab.com had a pretty fab showing, finishing atop the SCIQ 25 list, which measures the social commerce strategies of retailers based on four key success factors.

The four factors used to compile the SCIQ 25 list are:

Increasing brand awareness on social networks, including the facilitation of friend-to-friend sharing and deeper website integration with social networks.
Increasing total upstream social traffic.
Increasing website social lift, or site visits, conversions, and shopping basket sizes.
Increasing social customer-relationship-management potential.

AllFacebook

New 8thBridge social commerce study: Pinterest has highest adoption, but lowest sales conversions

Inside Social Commerce, 12/11/12

A new survey says Pinterest has high adoption rate among hot brands, but is giving them the lowest sales conversions as well as the lowest traffic bumps compared to other social networks. The discovery is part of the second annual Social Commerce IQ (SCIQ) report from e-commerce company 8thBridge. The study looked at 500 influential social media brands.

About four out of the five brands included had a Pinterest presence with an average of 22 boards each. More than half of them incorporated a Pin It button on their main website. The average brand studied had 18,600 followers, impressive considering that most did not arrive on Pinterest until this year.

Facebook Influences Consumers 70% More Than Anything Else

Fashion Etc, 12/12/12
Looks like all that “liking” you’ve been doing is paying off!

A recent study by 8thBridge found that 70% of consumers are more likely to respond to new products and brands when they hear about it from their Facebook friends (read: “likes” on their newsfeed) than any other form of advertisement.

“Social sharing, curation and discovery of luxury products are the most important social media engagement activities for customers today,” 8thBridge’s chief market officer, Jon Kubo said. “Simply posting to brand pages does not generate enough interaction to provide a valuable return.”

Fashion Etc

For Ecommerce, Social Media Needs More Than Just Your Presence

The nascent days of the World Wide Web in the early 1990′s found many companies satisfied with a web “presence” that consisted of a business name, physical address, phone number, and possibly an email address. That was ecommerce at its earliest from a web browser perspective.

Ecommerce evolved from that point, of course, to being an experience that’s dynamic enough to let customers (virtually) try on clothing before buying it, among other advances. Social media, in the form of Facebook, Twitter, the rapidly rising Pinterest, and others, bears some similarity to the early Web in how ecommerce has utilized it so far – a virtual signpost but not too much else.

ecommerce bytes

70pc of consumers seek new products from Facebook friends, not brands: study

Luxury Daily, 12/11/12

Seventy percent of consumers prefer to hear about new products from Facebook friends rather than brands, according to a new report by 8thBridge. Therefore, online retailers should incorporate social sharing into the commerce experience.

Barneys New York was the single luxury retailer to rank in the top 25 on the second annual Social Commerce IQ report due to its deep integration of social functions into the ecommerce setting. The survey also uncovered best practices for pushing social commerce on today’s digital landscape such as offering social expression capabilities and rewards, creating social list and curation opportunities and enabling social discovery features.

Luxury Daily

The Future of Social Commerce

Social Times, 12/11/12

The future of social commerce is not in traffic referrals from Facebook, Twitter, or even Pinterest, but in socially enabled e-commerce sites like Fab, say researchers at 8th Bridge. In the 2012 Social Commerce IQ Retail report, released today, research showed that the most successful internet retailers combine branding on social networks with social functionality within their own websites.

Social Times

Fab.com leads the pack in social commerce

Internet Retailer, 12/11/12

Fab.com has gone a long way toward solving the riddle of making money from social media. 24% of the flash-sale retailer’s traffic comes from shoppers clicking directly from social networks and half of its new customer acquisition stems from shoppers sharing the items they are interested in buying, or have bought. What’s more, the e-retailer reports a 15% conversion rate from what it calls socially discovered items, which are products that a shopper sees on a social network after one of her friends shared it.

From Transactions To Engagement

Oracle, 12/11/12

I’ve mentioned in the past that Oracle has invested quite a bit in acquiring social companies to build out its Social Relationship Management suite. The concept is to shift away from transactions and towards engagement. Social media represents a great opportunity to engage with customers, learn what they want, and personalize the shopping experience for them.

Oracle

Speed Summary: Top Retailers in Social Commerce – Second Annual Report (8thBridge)

Social Commerce Today, 12/11/12

Social commerce software developer and service provider 8thBridge has released its rather excellent and latest industry report, the Second Annual Social Commerce IQ Study, with a ranking of the top 25 retail brands in social commerce.

Fab.com wins, scoring high on four key social commerce criteria – brand awareness on social networks, upstream social media traffic, social features on e-commerce site, and SCRM potential via social apps such as social login. It’s no surprise that Fab.com is a business that runs shopping events. Social commerce works when you run events worth talking about (you generate word of mouth and drive customer loyalty)

Social Commerce Today

Social Sharing May Be Key To Monetizing Social Media

L2 Digital Digest, 12/11/12

How do retailers make money from social media? The answer, according to the 2012 Social Commerce IQ Study released by 8thBridge, is definitely not in the brands’ own social network pages. The report found that less than 2.5% of retailers’ traffic is driven from Facebook, and that figure falls to 0.13% for Pinterest, and 0.07% for Twitter. Instead, the key may be to integrate social functionalities directly into the brand’s own e-commerce site and encourage their customers to be the ones sharing the products. “Simply posting to brand pages does not generate enough interaction to provide a valuable return,” says John Kubo, chief product officer at 8thBridge.

8thBridge’s Second Annual Social Commerce IQ Study Reveals New Retail Leaders Who Adopted Significantly Different Success Strategies Over Past Year

Companies Who Focused Predominantly on Social Network Presence Dropped Off Leader List, While a New Vanguard Created Richer Social Shopping Experiences Integrated Directly with Their Websites

Minneapolis, Dec. 10, 2012 – 8thBridge®, the market leader in social commerce, today announced the results of its second annual Social Commerce IQ (SCIQ) report, which analyzed the social commerce strategies of the majority of companies on the Internet Retailer 500 (IR 500) list. The study revealed a number of new best practices as compared to the 2011 report, including an extended focus beyond simply increasing social network presence to include creating richer social shopping experiences that are directly integrated with, and driven from, the top players’ ecommerce sites.

The “2012 SCIQ: Retail” report covered more than double the number of companies as the 2011 study, which focused entirely on retail brands. The report also reflected a major shift in social commerce strategy that is perhaps best exemplified by increasing interest in Pinterest, which has been adopted among 78 percent of IR 500 companies in less than a year but has not generated a corresponding rise in traffic or sales conversion. Pinterest emphasizes curation and the concept of an Interest Graph that creates more meaningful connections based on things that interest people rather than simply who they know.

8thBridge® ANNOUNCES THE ALL NEW GRAPHITE™. A REVOLUTIONARY NEW SOCIAL COMMERCE PLATFORM THAT EXPANDS SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT FROM CAMPAIGNS TO COMMERCE.

Graphite2 now offers wider community engagement that includes engaging the 95%
of social observers through a fun, Pinterest-like shopping experience.

Minneapolis, October 10, 2012 – 8thBridge, the market leader in social commerce, launched a release to its social commerce platform, 8thBridge GraphiteTM, during a live webinar event. Graphite2 is the first and only social commerce platform to weave a social experience into the entire ecommerce purchase funnel. With the launch of expanded Social Expressions, Curation & Discovery, Ratings, Rewards, and Social Login to the Graphite2 platform social engagement is dramatically expanded across two new dimensions.

8thBridge Joins Demandware LINK

PR Newswire, 8/1/2012
“8thBridge®, the market leader in social commerce, today announced it has become a Demandware LINK Technology Partner, joining a best-of-breed community committed to accelerating the adoption of innovative commerce technologies which complement the Demandware® Commerce platform. Through the LINK Technology Partner Program, 8thBridge has developed a pre-built integration between the 8thBridge Graphite™ social commerce platform and Demandware Commerce, making it possible for Demandware clients to implement its Graphite solution in a fraction of the time normally required…”

8thBridge: Social Commerce Platform Graphite Boosts Traffic From Facebook By 10%

AllFacebook, 6/19/2012
“Following the launch of its Graphite social commerce platform in late April, 8thBridge provided an update on its progress, saying that in their first four weeks on the platform, participating brands saw an average 10 percent increase in traffic from Facebook…”

Social Shopping (F-Commerce) Made Simple With Graphite from 8thBridge

Business Insider, 6/15/2012
“Facebook commerce, or F-commerce if you’re so inclined, was touted as the next big thing… then almost as quickly, proclaimed to be a…”

The Bottom Line Is Graphite the Answer to F-Commerce Woes?

Business of Fashion, 6/5/2012
“It wasn’t so long ago that many technology analysts made bold predictions on the potential of so-called “F-commerce,’ the practice of using Facebook as a direct sales channel. Some even speculated that…”

American Apparel, Hayneedle.com and More Launch Graphite Social Commerce Platform

RIS News, 6/5/2012
“The 8thBridge Graphite platform has partnered and launched with multiple retailers over the last month, including: American Apparel, Plum District, Guitar Center, Nine West, Avon/mark, Deb Shops, Hallmark, TOMS, Nasty Gal, Oscar de la Renta and Hayneedle.com…”

4 Startups Revolutionizing Social Commerce

Mashable, 6/04/2012
“In 2010 Mark Zuckerberg said, “If I had to guess, social commerce is next to blow up.” We was right. Social media has changed the way we shop online, and the statistics confirm it…”

Facebook Takes Action, Introduces Action Links to the Open Graph

PandoDaily, 6/4/2012
“In September 2011 at its f8 Developer Conference, Facebook introduced the social world to frictionless sharing and Action Verbs. With the rollout of its Open Graph, the 900 million strong social network declared that the future of engagement would be driven by both implicit and explicit actions…”

Social Commerce: From Hi to Buy

WWD, 5/11/2012
“Ever since 1-800-Flowers made history by launching a chrysanthemum-bedecked “birthday cake” on Facebook in 2009 as the first-ever product to be retailed on the site, cracking the social commerce code has been top of mind for marketers and technocrats alike…”

Social Commerce Leader, 8thBridge, Named a Finalist for the 2012 Red Herring Top 100 Americas Award

PR Newswire, 5/10/2012
“8thBridge, Inc., the market leader in social commerce, announced today it has been selected as a Finalist for Red Herring’s Top 100 Americas award, a prestigious list honoring the year’s most promising private technology ventures from the North American business region…”

5 Tips for Custom Facebook Open Graph Buttons

Get Elastic, 05/9/2012
“Since reporting late last year that Facebook sharing buttons, through the Open Graph, will morph into a variety of creative verbs and nouns beyond Like, Share and Recommend, custom integrations have been gradually popping up around the Web…”

I think I more than ‘like’ you

StarTribune, 4/25/2012
“A Facebook tool from Minneapolis e-marketing firm 8thBridge gives users a way to expand their vocabulary of online retail desire…

8thBridge CEO on New Tool for Social Shopping

WebProNews, 4/25/2012
“Back in 2009, 8thBridge was the first company to enable “f-commerce” through the launch of the 1-800-Flowers Facebook store. There was a lot of excitement as many other brands came on board with their own Facebook storefront…”

Rethinking ‘f-commerce’

GigaOm, 4/24/2012
“8thBridge helped coin the term “f-commerce” by being the first to open a store on Facebook in 2009 for 1-800-Flowers. But after helping build dozens of other branded stores on Facebook for companies, the sales never really materialized, something 8thBridge CEO Wade Gerten acknowledged earlier this year when he said f-commerce deserved an F. But Gerten believes there is a future in using Facebook as a sales channel, though it means rethinking the role Facebook plays in it…”

8thBridge Graphite Social Commerce Platform Taps Facebook Open Graph Action Verbs

All Facebook, 4/24/2012
“Social commerce provider 8thBridge announced the launch of its new Graphite platform today, including extensive incorporation of Facebook open graph action verbs. Graphite was designed to easily integrate with marketers’ existing channels and marketing systems…”

8thBridge Launches New Social Commerce Platform Called Graphite; Multi-channel Integration is Selling Point

Social Commerce Today, 4/24/2012
“Graphite is a gray, crystalline form of carbon that occurs as a mineral in some rocks, It’s also the name of the new social commerce platform from 8thBridge. 8thBridge has come a long way since it first put f-commerce on the map with the development of…”

S-Commerce’s New ‘Like’

WWD, 4/24/2012
“A new platform with enhanced social action buttons will launch today that aims to transform the notion of social commerce, or s-commerce. Wade Gerten, founder and chief executive officer of technology solution 8thBridge, has spent the past year developing the platform, called Graphite…”

8thBridge Launches a New Era of Social Commerce With the Industry’s First Multi-Channel Social Commerce Platform

PR Newswire, 4/24/2012
“8thBridge, the market leader in social commerce, today unveiled its new social commerce platform, 8thBridge Graphite™, during a video streaming event. Graphite is the first social commerce platform built from the ground up to be easily integrated with existing channels and marketing systems…”

8thBridge Named Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer

PR Newswire, 4/19/2012
“8thBridge, Inc. announced today it was recognized by the Facebook® Preferred Marketing Developer (“PMD”) team as a Facebook PMD. 8thBridge’s acceptance into the Facebook PMD program follows an extensive review process by the PMD team…”

Online Landscape Evolves With S-Commerce

WWD, 2/23/2012
“Social commerce is so much more than a brand or retailer’s fan page store…”

How To Make A Killer Timeline App For Facebook Retail

All Facebook, 2/23/2012
“Social commerce shouldn’t replicate what already exists in other retail channels, says Wade Gerten, founder and chief executive officer of 8thBridge…”

E-Commerce Experts Bustos & Gerten on F-Commerce – #Fail or Fan-tastic?

Social Commerce Today, 2/21/2012
“So two e-commerce experts, Get Elastic’s Linda Bustos and 8thBridge’s Wade Gerten, have weighed in on the news and ensuing debate that a number of brands including JC Penney, Gamestop, Nordstrom and GAP…”

Facebook stores fail f-commerce goals by selling not socialising

ZDNet, 02/21/2012
“F-commerce seems more than just a store front within Facebook. It is about empowering people to promote brands to their friends. According to Wade Gerten, CEO of 8thBridge, ‘Online shopping experiences are better when they are social’…”

Is F-Commerce “Fail” Commerce?

Get Elastic, 02/20/2012
“Last week we posted a little video parody on the things ecommerce consultants say. One of the tongue-in-cheek examples is ‘Social media isn’t about driving sales, per se…what do you mean you don’t have a Facebook store?’ The next day, Bloomberg published an article reminding us that big retailers like JC Penney, Gamestop, Nordstrom and GAP that have…”

F-Commerce Future: Bulls, Bears, Fans or Five Blind Men and an Elephant

Social Commerce Today, 2/20/2012
“Gerten’s company, which works with major retailers to implement f-commerce strategies, may have found a key. Rather than brands promoting products/services…”

Facebook storefronts fail, but f-commerce isn’t a failure

ZDNet, 02/18/2012
“In short, there are companies who are using Facebook to grow their business and those who are failing to do so. Here’s the trick: don’t just shove your products onto Facebook users; build a service or feature people will actually want to use with their Facebook friends. Increased sales will follow…”

Gap, Nordstrom, J.C. Penny, Gamestop Close Facebook Storefronts

All Facebook, 2/17/2012
“The best way to monetize social media is to empower people to promote products to their friends…”

Facebook Shopping Apathy? Smart Plays On F-Commerce

Forbes, 2/17/2012
“Bloomberg published an article today about the poor performance of Facebook Storefronts and how retailers are closing them amid “apathy.” It was one more article in a series of articles downplaying the value of Facebook to retailers. The Bloomberg article and others…”

The Latest