Social shopping is a nut that no one has been able to crack. The idea sounds good; people enjoy shopping together in malls and such. But online, there have been many attempts, and many failures. Plurchase, a Y Combinator-backed company, is the latest to take on the task.
Obviously, Plurchase thinks it has what it takes to succeed in the space with a new method of doing things. In the past, social shopping sites have either required you to have a browser plug-in to converse with friends while on shopping sites, or they have been entirely new sites that everyone had to go to. Plurchase simply offers a social overlay to the sites you already use, and makes it easy to invite friends to join you.
Say you want to shop for something on Zappos, you visit Plurchase’s site then hit the button to take you to Zappos. You will see the Zappos site just as you normally would, but with the addition of a Plurchase panel on the right hand side of your web browser. On this panel you will see your buddy list of other Plurchase users, which includes what sites they are currently shopping on. There’s also a link to invite other friends to join you in shopping with Plurchase via email. And below that is a chat area to talk to your online friends as you shop.
If you find an item you like while shopping and want to show a friend, you can bookmark the item and leave a comment. You can also note whether you “like” it, “dislike” it, or note that it’s “cool.” Your friends can do this as well. Anytime you bookmark an item, it shows up in the chat area with a link, so your online friends will see it and can see what you’re looking at.
And if you hook up Plurchase through Facebook Connect, you can also ask you Facebook friends what they think about items by sending them to your Facebook page.
One interesting thing about Plurchase is that although the site just has Zappos, Amazon, and Craigslist integration right now, the plan is to eventually roll it out to all the big online retailers. And when that happens, you will be able to chat with friends while you’re shopping at Zappos even if they’re shopping somewhere else, like Amazon.
“Plurchase requires no download/install/plugin for users, and no sign-up. There’s zero integration work required by the merchants. Plurchase uses some clever technology. We use a custom proxy server to ‘wrap’ our functionality around the retailer site, and that includes proxifying their JavaScript and Flash code,” co-founder Tom Saffell tells us.
The core idea behind Plurchase is that while online retailers are great at selling items, creating their own social integration won’t work well because it is limited to just that one site. “We see Plurchase as part of a broader trend: the distribution of social features across all types of websites,” Saffell notes. He’s written more about that idea here.
The plan is to extend Plurchase’s social feature to include Twitter integration soon as well, we’re told.
You can shop on amazon.com too !
Just type amazon into the search box !
yep corrected that, thanks tom.
Congrats Tom!
That’s awesome! I am looking fwd to use the site, though I am not a typical online shopper, or don’t hang around on the shopping sites a lot. Lot of times I land up on a shopping site redirected from a PriceGrabber type of affiliate site, and by the time I land on the shopping site, the decision is made.
Because they let you browse the user review, compare the prod & price. So alongwith shopping sites, you might want to include some of those folks as well. (Pricegrabber, Dealtime, epinions, etc.)
played with a beta version of this, and it’s compelling. and shoes are a great category to start with, too!
The method they employee is indeed very clever, as the shopping websites are proxies through Plurchase…
Unfortunately doesn’t this also not mean that that the login credentials and payment information such as credit card and what not should also be proxied through their servers?
Yes, but they are sent transparently to amazon. We don’t store it into memory more than 200 milliseconds. If someone came and stole our physical machine, they wouldn’t even know you shopped at amazon.
Why would I want to buy what my friends are buying? If I want to look like a twin I will give them a call and ask.
This continues to be a stupid idea no matter how it’s done.
I am laying my bets that this hits the deadpool in 9-12 months if not sooner.
No offense to the smart people working there. But its just one of those ideas that won’t work because people don’t want to buy this way.
Wake up and Smell the Coffee…
lol, the stupidity of comments continue to rival youtube…
looks great, congrats on the launch!
I really don’t see the value in this. I’m just sayin…
Christmas shopping madness is coming…it will be a good time to see.
I think that would be a good use case because people might want to buy for a family member in common.
Now if you could get group rates for buying things, then it would be worth something. Otherwise it’s pretty silly.
Well put. With this concept you would have a new business model … just not a social media tactic. This problem would require a more sophisticated solution such as a shopping cart integration and the need to measure sales + customer interactions.
Isn’t pipitpurch a direct competitor to plurchase?
Not even close ….. we’re a pure retailer solution that provides users with a totally new e-commerce experience. We operate deep in the purchasing funnel and provide tools to optimize the shopping process for consumers, retailers, and sales/CSR reps. Our patent pending real-time visual merchandising technology differentiates us from all the quasi-competitors. Thanks for the poke though!
I think its a cool idea, but they need to hookup some voice/video chat. Text chat is a bit awkward especially if you’re clicking around the shopping site alot. I can see this being popular with mom folk.
Watch this space…
While the service will have its own audience, I personally would not invest in the concept even if the product is a better mousetrap. There is a reason why previous attempts ended as failures…
One of the reasons – consumer adoption.
Many people indeed will not disclose to thousands of their online friends and colleagues items that they buy online. Some due to the desire for privacy all together, some due to the nature of particular items.
Let’s see. How many professionals will ever want their colleagues and customers to see lingerie they are buying for themselves (ladies) or lovers/wives (guys)?
How many sex related items are purchased online? Do you really want your online network to lineup to test drive your new toy? And let’s be brutally honest, probably at least 30% of adult online shoppers buy porn video tapes online. Now, is that something you would like to share with the world?
Or simply, would you want your office friend to show up in the office in same suite as you just bought?
There are many reasons why social shopping in the “real” world is not equal to the one made online. So, the attempt to duplicate the experience will most probably fail. But there is a great opportunity to create an absolutely new experience. But I think that profile of the users have to be studied indepth. I would rather see it as a niche product, not a product for mass adoption. But I might be wrong.
In any case, I wish you guys a great success in this venture!
I think you’re missing the point that people do go shopping together in malls with friends and family. No they don’t go shopping for lingerie or porno flix, but for less racy items.
My wife’s best friend is 1000 miles away and they actually go shopping online together over the phone. “Go here, click here, see this item, etc.” I believe Plurchase is something they might use.
Also, your argument regarding “consumer adoption” is circular. Poor products/ideas do not get consumer adoption. Period. Let’s see if this changes the “nature” of social shopping and, to your point, we’ll know on the basis of consumer adoption.
While the service will have its own audience, I personally would not invest in the concept even if the product is a better mousetrap. There is a reason why previous attempts ended as failures…
One of the reasons – consumer adoption.
Many people indeed will not disclose to thousands of their online friends and colleagues items that they buy online. Some due to the desire for privacy all together, some due to the nature of particular items.
Let’s see. How many professionals will ever want their colleagues and customers to see lingerie they are buying for themselves (ladies) or lovers/wives (guys)?
How many sex related items are purchased online? Do you really want your online network to lineup to test drive your new toy? And let’s be brutally honest, probably at least 30% of adult online shoppers buy porn video tapes online. Now, is that something you would like to share with the world?
Or simply, would you want your office friend to show up in the office in same suite as you just bought?
There are many reasons why social shopping in the “real” world is not equal to the one made online. So, the attempt to duplicate the experience will most probably fail. But there is a great opportunity to create an absolutely new experience. But I think that profile of the users have to be studied indepth. I would rather see it as a niche product, not a product for mass adoption. But I might be wrong.
In any case, I wish you guys a great success in this venture!
I find this idea very interesting and is part of a movement to go after social shopping. I am working on an ecommerce solution that addresses some of this need but not all of it. I do think that people like to shop together but I don’t know if they want to tell all of their friends all the time. There needs to be a balance as it otherwise becomes more noise in people’s lives as well as too personal, as others have mentioned.
Interesting site and idea. I’ve been thinking about this as well. I have a better website name, its called shopperfriends.com – If a site is to gain traction, I think it would need a better name than plurchase.
I think it’s a great idea!! I can’t wait until there are more stores on it, and I would ask different people to go shopping with me. I would ask someone with good taste in clothes to help me pick out items, and I would ask a friend who is knowledgeable in electronics to help pick out electronics. etc. etc.
The list is endless and I think it will be a BIG success and a household name.
It is very interesting to see that iframes are getting more and more popular. Digg, StumbleUpon and other applications showed some interesting new functions around iframes. This one is a try worth.
I’ve tried a number of these kinds of sites, and this one is the best social shopping site out there. Plurchase presents some interesting business model opportunities for e-commerce sites, and I hope they will capitalize on that. I hope they gain a large audience!
All of the sites to date fail because they don’t realize it’s about enablement, insight into products regarding fit, etc. and ultimately, the best deal someone can find. They all believe its about discovery but they then compete with far better, far more respected outlets like magazines, etc. to drive consumer attention. What they really need to do is go to the massive 1.0 social networks in fashion and shopping and see what moves and motivates those users. I can tell you right now, it’s not this.
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i like shoping at zappos.