Pikaba Blog

The Social Commerce Boom: What The Power Players Say

Alex Grechanowski — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:34:16 +0000

Social commerce sales topped $9 billion in 2012 and should exceed $30 billion in 2015. 40% of Twitter users regularly search for products via Twitter, 12% of consumers purchased a product online because of info on Twitter, and 60% are willing to post about products/services on Facebook if they get a deal or discount. Source.

AlwaysOn Network presented the OnMedia NYC 2013 event held on March 18-19, 2013 in New York. Jeffrey Holmes. The session we’d like to feature on Pikaba blog uncovers the winning social commerce tactics and strategies circa 2013. Enjoy!

What It Takes to Win in Social Commerce

Host: Babak Yaghmaie, Partner, Cooley LLP
Chantel Waterbury (@chantelchloe), Founder & CEO, Chloe + Isabel
Tommaso Trionfi (@tommasot), CEO, Merchantry
Manish Chandra (@marrc), Founder & CEO, Poshmark

About AO TV – AlwaysOn Network

AlwaysOn is the leading business media brand connecting and informing the entrepreneurial community in the Global Silicon Valley. AlwaysOn editorial and event programming covers the booming areas of digital media and entertainment, ondemand and cloud computing, mobile technology, and greentech. Today, AO TV produces some of the highest quality, graphically powerful video content in the business-to-business media world. AO events are filled with powerful thought leaders eager to give their opinion.

Smith Business Close-Up: Mobile Commerce Trends

Alex Grechanowski — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:47:14 +0000

Mobile commerce involves the marriage of secure mobile transactions with a huge mobile user growth.

Ecommerce and online sales have revolutionized holiday shopping. First there was the rise of Cyber Monday, but now the growth of mobile and tablet-based commerce makes it even easier to shop from anywhere at any time. Social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest – has accelerated this process, with consumers sharing purchased and shopping tips with friends and retailers offering special deals.

In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Bill Rand talks about how ecommerce and social media have changed online shopping and the way we now buy things.

Introducing Our Revamped YouTube Channel

Alex Grechanowski — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:24:10 +0000

We’ve updated our YouTube channel with new videos and playlists. It’s now ready for you – get your popcorn and check it out: http://www.youtube.com/user/PikabaCom

For your convenience, we’ve organized playlist in three major categories:

You can also subscribe to it, so you will always have our new videos at your fingertips.

Thank you for watching and stay tuned!

Pikaba for Sellers – Plans and Pricing – All You Have to Do is Sell

Alex Grechanowski — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 19:09:44 +0000

At Pikaba we’re working hard at building the best social commerce platform to empower SMBs and creative businesses. So what’s this going to cost you? If you’re considering joining our marketplace as a seller, here’s our pricing model – Merchant Plans – that lets you run an online store and use our lead generation tools, including

A product-request matching dashboard that updates in real-time.
Instantly give price quotes, special offers, discounts and coupons to the potential buyers., individually or in bulk.
Track leads and eliminate bad leads.
Receive email or SMS notifications about new relevant shopping requests.

There are three Merchant Plans currently being offered:

Merchant – for individual sellers or service providers
MerchantPro - the most popular among Pikaba sellers
MerchantMax – includes all the features of Merchant and MerchantPro plans. Sellers with a large volume of products especially will benefit from the simplified pricing.

If you’re not a Pikaba seller yet, follow our easy sign-up process to create your account:

Go to the Plans & Pricing page.
Select a plan by clicking the Choose Plan button.
Complete a short registration form and then click Sign Up.
Confirm the email address, open your own online store and offer special deals to our growing community of social shoppers.

Social Commerce in Action: How Pikaba Helps Publishers and Local Communities

Alex Grechanowski — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:32:56 +0000

Your content is king. Your community is awesome. But are you still looking for ways to increase revenues? Whether you’re an influential blogger, a technology early adopter, a professional service directory owner with an awesome community behind you, Pikaba can help you profit from your expertise and industry insight.

Pikaba connects offline-local with online-mobile-social

Pikaba, a social commerce platform, employs name-your-price and what-you-want models bringing an engaging and responsive social marketplace, including online stores, lead generation, communities, group buying and recommendations. By taking it to the next level with white-label marketplaces for publishers and local communities, Pikaba seems to have pretty much everything for the next big thing in commerce, both offline (local) and online.

So, how does it work?

You’ll get one central location to create, manage and report on your social commerce marketplace:

Connect Buyers and Sellers in your niche
Empower your community with social commerce
Build your own economic value
Launch consultation and training
Monetize traffic and profit from transactions

Watch this video with Pikaba CEO Dmitry Balin (@DBalin) and learn how Pikaba helped Jewish Washington move from their old classifieds website to a modern, easy-to-manage community marketplace.

Take the Next Step

Benefit from the sharing economy – create your social marketplace on Pikaba.

Learn more about our social commerce and social shopping tools:

Want to Get Better Deals? Invite Friends on Pikaba

Alex Grechanowski — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:57:03 +0000

Is Your Network Big Enough To Get a Bargain?

As a social shopping network, Pikaba provides niche group-buying capabilities, focused by interest, location, and buying groups. In other words you’ll end up paying less if there’s a group of people that wants to buy the same item. So why don’t you make your network big enough just to get the best deal for your next vacation to Hawaii?

Building Your Social Shopping Network on Pikaba

Pikaba-based social shoppers and powerful dealhunters now have three handy options to invite people to their shopping or group buying network. Rest assured, Pikaba makes it pretty darn easy to invite someone connect to you or be your friend (pick your favorite metaphor).

Pikaba.com – Where Your Network And Shopping Merge

The starting page for all your invitation activities is called Invite Friends - no surprises here - and is located on your profile: pikaba.com/friends/invite.aspx. Login to your Pikaba account and see what’s under the hood:

1) Ask Your Facebook Friends to Join

Under the Facebook tab, click the Invite Friends button. Make sure you’re using Facebook as your personal account and not as your Page.

In the appeared pop-up window, scroll through your friends and check the boxes next to the names of the people you want to invite. You can also search for friends in the search box. When you’re done selecting friends, be sure to click Send Requests to send your friends invitations to your Pikaba network.

2) Invite People From Your Address Book

This option can help you find people who are already on Pikaba by looking up contacts from your address books. You can invite contacts to join Pikaba from this page as well.

3) Send Personal Email Invitations

It’s probably the most easiest way of building your network: just enter your friend’s name and email, click Send Invite and in a matter of seconds Pikaba will deliver an invitation to your friend’s inbox.

What’s Next?

Everything is more fun with friends. Post your request describing what you’re looking for — merchants will compete to give you their best deals and discounts! Then share your requests with your network – remember, the bigger the better – and save money using the power of group buying. It’s time to monetize your network. We’ll see you on Pikaba!

Social Shopping Video Series by Havas Media

Alex Grechanowski — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:23:06 +0000

According to research done by Booz & Company, a global consulting firm, by 2015, the dollar volume of goods sold globally through social media is expected to rise six-fold, to $30 billion from $5 billion in 2011.

Global media communications agency Havas Media has launched the new video in its digital trends series: Social Shopping. The agency teamed up with social media leader Facebook, top eyewear brand Warby Parker and marketing technology expert FaceCake to explore one of the biggest trends in digital today. Watch the video:

“Shopping has always been a social experience. But now, through emerging technologies, tools and communities, that experience is enhanced for both brands and customers” - said Rori DuBoff (@rduboff), SVP, Director of Global Strategy, Havas Media (@HavasMedia).

View the accompanying social shopping trends report on SlideShare.

About the Digital Trends Video Series

In partnership with top innovative companies and industry specialists, the Havas Media video series explores burgeoning global media trends that show how marketers are connecting with consumers in new and more meaningful ways. Trend areas include progressive screens, social shopping, location-based marketing, cashless commerce, content co-creation/curation, augmented learning, big data and predictive analytics, smarter search and life tracking. Videos will be launched regularly throughout the year, as they are most relevant to marketers.

About Havas Media

Havas Media represents one of the world’s fastest growing media networks and its agencies have grown from 10 markets in 1999 to 126 markets in 2012. Havas Media services its clients through a portfolio of specialist global networks and agencies.

Related reports:

Social commerce: The real trend of 2013 by Brafton
Social Commerce: Where is it Heading? by Business 2 Community
Social commerce best practices: infographic by Econsultancy

Pikaba Ranks #120 on the GeekWire 200 Startup List

Alex Grechanowski — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 18:30:32 +0000

It’s time to celebrate yet another great milestone for Pikaba. We ranked #120 on the GeekWire 200 List. Companies on this list are startups based in the Seattle region, involved in a wide variety of technology, web and scientific fields.

GeekWire 200 is a ranked index of Seattle-area startups that uses publicly available data to identify the technology companies most popular and trending among key online communities. The index pulls in data from LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and SEOmoz, using a weighted algorithm to rank the companies from GeekWire’s larger Seattle Startup List, a directory of more than 700 startups from the Seattle region.

GeekWire will be recalculating the index each month, with an accompanying post on GeekWire highlighting the latest trends as reflected by changes in the list. We’re looking forward to ending up #1 on the list!

Polyvore CEO: Community Gives Us Tons of Data

Alex Grechanowski — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 15:10:33 +0000

Polyvore CEO and Co-Founder Jess Lee (@jesskah) lays out her company’s approach of using technology to empower communities and track trends to improve the product experience of social commerce.

Jess Lee is CEO of Polyvore, a social commerce technology company. Prior to co-founding Polyvore, Lee was a product manager at Google, where she worked on Google Maps.

This video was recorded for Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture Series.

Engage Your Members and Make More Money with Pikaba Social Commerce SaaS

Alex Grechanowski — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:15:08 +0000

The ecommerce world as we know it is becoming more complex and getting bigger. Just a few examples: in-store location based services, touch commerce, mobile payments, social gifting. For over a year now, we have provided social commerce marketplaces for local businesses and brands that wanted a secure infrastructure with flexible payment options and all those new social commerce capabilities.

With all of these changes, what’s really to be expected from a social community software in 2013?

Your social community software hosted by Pikaba – Software as a service (SaaS) or on-demand software - includes the same great set of features as Pikaba.com but it’s packaged to fit your business model, your design, branding, and your domain. It’s a fully hosted software solution with a web-based interface and community management.

In 2013 and beyond, Pikaba is your one-stop place to:

Create your own social network site
Build a vibrant online community
Engage mobile and local users
Manage your online content and advertising
Connect buyers and sellers in any niche
Get more social-savvy customers

Watch this short video and see how Pikaba social commerce software can get your community or marketplace up and running:

Learn more about our social commerce SaaS: