IMshopping has launched a human-powered shopping search site and Twitter shopping service designed to help consumers find niche products on the web. It’s sort of like a shopping 411 service, which human guides on call respond to product questions and provide personalized recommendations for users about what product best suits their needs. IMShopping tries to simulate the experience of going into a store, speaking with a sales person and being guided to the item that works best for you. IMShopping also closed a $4.7 million Series A round of funding from SK Telecom Ventures.
IMSHopping hopes to fill the gap pf personalized, detail-oriented service that e-commerce sites don’t have, since these sites are focused less on answering technical questions about a product and more on price and reviews. Twitter users can directly ask questions by messaging @imshopping. The shopping guides in the community and trained experts offer detailed responses within minutes. Shoppers can use these responses to instantly make purchases or save to their own folders before making a product decision.
Shoppers who are asking questions on IMShopping’s site can search IMshopping’s database for product questions that have been already answered, or pose their own shopping questions (the site currently has an archive of 20,000 questions). As the shopping guides craft their response, they review a detailed analysis of the product, including specifications, reviews from third-party sites, blog buzz and price. This response is then delivered to the shopper and also archived anonymously for review by future shoppers. All public questions and responses are searchable via Twitter or can be viewed by following @imshopping. Consumers can also ask direct questions via Twitter that are not made public.
The guide will give you an answer of where to find your desired item and also provide you with links to sites where the item can be purchased. You can also rate the response you received from the guide-the guides are paid based on the quality and etail of their responses. The site is really designed to get answers on where to get hard to find or obscure items-like what electronic toy is best for a hyperactive two year old. If you already have a specific item in mind, the site may be useless to you.
As a business model, IMShopping collects revenue when consumer buy products that are recommended through the site. The problem is that when a consumer finally gets the right product for their needs, what is there to stop them from then searching for the produt on Google. The company is staying quiet on future business plans we are told that over time the company will roll out programs for general consumers to earn value from assisting on searches and getting rated for the quality of their answers.
Human search hasn’t done well in the past; take a look at ChaCha’s former business model. It’s hard to understand how human guides could do better than Google or Yahoo unless the guides are experts in electronics, clothes etc. IMShopping is hoping to add the human touch to the online shopping experience but increasingly retail sites employ staff to conduct live chats with potential customers.
ambitious
I think the human element here is pretty interesting.
We’ve used crowd sourcing to enhance our relevancy algorithm because of the scarcity of data on twitter.
I tried out their Twitter service by messaging @imshopping. It worked very well. The ability to start getting shopping selections from some real person without having to register on the site is a nice feature. It appears that they auto-register you.
Same… works surprisingly well!
Just a matter of time before someone came out with the right delivery on how to harness social interaction and deploy it as a recommendation engine.
Very impressed.
interesting for many people.
how is this supposed to scale though ?
I am assuming the community will help answer questions the same way that Yahoo! answers has gown so tremendously. I think this kind of service will explode in todays fast buying age. Not to mention the need for good deals.
I like their whole in-store accessibility. That’s what we do too, and it’s something that is really useful.
Wow,
so, may be, twitter is the next powerful human search engine, just maybe
Monetization, loyalty, scalability, and defensible differentiation appear very large challenges for this company to scale the business.
This investment was made by SK Telecom but not by the venture fund SK Telecom Ventures.
60% of Twitter users have stopped using it a month after joining:
http://tech.yah...ttwitternielsen
the oprah crowd doesn’t get twitter
One of the better adaptations of a comparison shopping engine. Also, I like the cute ‘how it works’ video on the home page.
Interesting, but could also be a powerful platform if it catered to consumers that are physically shopping on-the-go. Something like Cha-Cha but more focused…
Impressive!
I’m just a bit puzzle by the idea that people will ask questions and wait for an answer.
People are not just that patients anymore in this world of multiples search engines and shopping sites.
That is why ChaCha is having hard time selling their model to people.
I think the Idea is great, but there is something much better coming, you guys need to check DealitLive.com launching on May 6th, i wonder if this is the future?? anyone can create there own Live Video Shopping channel, but also lets you re-list the Live Show you made for up to 7 days, just in case you didn’t sell through or if you have more of the same product. amazingly it also lets consumers interact live with the sellers. So consumers can actually ask the seller to turn the product around or turn it on, i guess would work same on any other product such as cars etc…, anyhow amazing what you can do today.
I think the Idea is great, but there is something much better coming, you guys need to check DealitLive.com launching on May 6th, i wonder if this is the future?? anyone can create there own Live Video Shopping channel, but also lets you re-list the Live Show you made for up to 7 days, just in case you didn’t sell through or if you have more of the same product. amazingly it also lets consumers interact live with the sellers. So consumers can actually ask the seller to turn the product around or turn it on, i guess would work same on any other product such as cars etc…, anyhow amazing what you can do today.
Depending on the legitimacy of these answers – this could be a great idea. It seems like many are currently internally seeded & answered (which, I understand is necessary in the beginning). Their UI is very well done.
One note though – I’m playing around with it and asked a question. By default, they took my email and used it as my username. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to edit this
It’s more of a feature rather than a business, as it should complement the other ways people research and buy, not just rely on this single channel.
Watch out for Crowdstorm.co.uk with a new twist on this entire concept – coming in May.
Just checked out and actually used their service today… it’s not bad at all! I am a horrible shopper and my wife never shops for me anymore… she’s too busy with the kids haha. I will continue using this service… hope it doesn’t get any more complicated though in the future like so many other sites.