Chat While You E-Shop?
2It occurred to me recently that second screen viewing (albeit some reports claiming a decline) is a new way that people are engaging tv/movies, etc. Basically we like to discuss what we are experiencing in a new way beyond the average movie theatre whisper rudeness.
With sports blogs continuing this trend and incorporating Live Chats for people to rally and complain about the goings-on as a collective fan base, is there room for a chat room-style discussion for shopping events like a flash sale? If it's running outside of the main browser (and thus not hampered by the F5/Refresh), would people enjoy discussing items outside of a forum/message board format?
From a Con standpoint, it might inhibit people from making purchases but from a Pro standpoint, it could definitely ramp up excitement and flesh out the cost/benefits of a product before purchase, in real-time... making for better informed, non-return customers?
Just a thought that's been on my mind for a while.
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Follow-up, to myself...
A CHAT-based discussion, instead of a msg board, would also better enable the use of promo codes or "For everyone in here interested, how about a toaster for $4" rapid-fire sales by moderators.
Kinda reminds me of the old Quoros.com site that Amazon bought as an aquihire http://mashable.com/2011/12/28/amazon-hires-quorus/
I think that was the idea behind the Woot Happy Hour.
Back when I worked at Woot, I'd check out the justin.tv chat video page to see the woot off reactions. There was a good amount in the chat room but not too many participating.
A flash sale isn't that important of an event to pay attention too. But still, if you've got a big enough audience, then you'll get some hardcore fans that start up chat rooms. It's pretty amazing to look back and realize how much attention was focused on the Woot Off. It would be a trending topic on Twitter, and there would be pages and pages of comments in the forum.
I think it would be a fun idea, but it's a lot of work to set up a flash sale -- then to include a chat room would introduce another load of work that I think wouldn't be that much of a pay off.
Sounds dead on Jellyfish.com. A social shopping site that was a round for a few years before being purchased by Microsoft..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfish.com
Chat window on the right side of the screen and a reverse auction on the left. Huge success till Microsoft paid to shut them down. They had a show every day at 10am pst that was hosted and there were games along with the reverse auctions. Prizes included merchandise and cash. Some fabulous deals were made as the prices dropped, who would pull the trigger. Catch was, there was only one of each item, and once it was gone, it was gone.. in fact that was their motto...
I'm a bit late but was thinking this exact thing - good memory. Weird acquihire I guess by Microsoft.
I actually enjoy chatting while shopping...at least during wootoffs. it might be good to have chat integrated into one window/tab though so you don't always have to bounce back and forth.
A long time ago when there were no cell phones and internet was all dial up and Amazon was still a river in SA. ... AOL IM was the way to shop w/ friends online. The only way, unless they were at your house.
It was especially fun to shop w/ long-distance friends using this cutting edge technology.
Ah, those were the days.... Nordstrom's used to have much better deals when there weren't as many shoppers online.
Clarification. I do not mean I shopped through AOL. YUCK. Friends just used IM to chat while checking out websites.
@jmhsrv, Those were the days! I miss that place so much. Somebody really needs to reinvent that site (any mediocre business folk listening?).
@pitamuffin, yep! I got some great stuff there and even hosted a couple shows. It was a really great model.
We created such a site in 2008 named RedTagCrazy.com. We sold luxury women's apparel at 50-90% off. It was originally inspired by whiskeymilitia.com and featured a real-time chat room under the one-deal-at-a-time product. Traffic grew quickly and avg time on site hit around 30 minutes. Customers became super die hard fanatics, much like wooters. We had to shut down because we sucked at controlling costs and weren't able to raise money to paper over the mistakes. I'd love to get it going again.
I would be down with that, or implement a way to send a quick message to the major social networks like the FB.
Bummed to be a late discussion arrival myself but I did love seeing this was posted and discussed. I think the hidden issue is that most retailers would not support this on their own platform. Various excuses would exist, some dumb and conventional (not wanting anything negative discussed), some a bit more valid (not easy to stop competitors from hiring trolls).
My thought has always been to build a 3rd party discussion platform that is open for discussion on any item for sale on the internet. Organized by distinct URL with crowdsourced mapping/maintenance as links evolve, etc. I think that two modes "chat" and "forum" are both valid on the same platform, with a global nav showing where chat was active at any given time (presumably flash sales). Ideally you'd have a browser widget that would notify you of comments or chat while you shopped at a retailer (would require a certain type of user to allow that sort of information access though)
I had that ol' #deals.woot IRC over at Rizon, although I can't remember the last time we talked about anything deals related... I always felt that was moderately successful, but it was mostly for the die-hard and excluded a lot of "casuals" if you will. Still, it was a good way to get a quicker paced discussion during woot-offs and was able to facilitate quite a few games nicely.
Would definitely love to see chat integrated alongside these forums though.
I sometimes recoil at "chat" versus "forums" - I guess there are pros/cons of each.
Chat Pros: Live (fast response), Entertaining, Immersive, Low bar to Participate
Chat Cons: Ephemeral, Low bar dilutes future research value, do experts even participate?
actually not much need to list the forum ones as they just run counter to the above.
I think a future "chat while you shop" needs at least a per-topic wiki if not a full forum in order to be building residual content value. Potentially the chat actually makes persistent content creation less active. To be clear, I think this residual content value is essential for a site to attract new users.