Pinterest is a (burst) bubble without a viable business model.  The magazine industry has a dead business model.  But together, the two could combine to create next generation of profitable social commerce.

That’s the conclusion we came to to after reading Frédéric Cavazza’s excellent post on the future structure of the social commerce industry (in French).

In a nutshell, Fréd, prolific blogger and author of one of the best presentations to date on social commerce, suggests that the next phase in social commerce is curation via a creative combination of “blogging and boarding” – curated and personalized product selections (powered by a next-generation social recommender system) that combines Pinterest-style boards with editorial content.  Ultimately these may evolve into virtual shop assistants with a ‘meta-basket’ allowing shoppers to add products from different vendors as they browse.

From this perspective, the problem that social commerce solves is that it reduces choice by filtering out the junk and presenting users with a personalised range of options – informed  by the selections and opinions of others.  In other words social commerce makes shoppers smarter by acting as a smart intermediary between vendors and shoppers.

Whilst social shopping apps such as ThisNext, Fantasy Shopper, Fashiolista ou Shopcade may come to mind, what comes to mind for us is Stuff Magazine, the FT’s brilliant How to Spend it app, or even the lowly Consumer Reports/Which Magazine.

One part Flipboard, one-part Pinterest and one part Stuff magazine is the recipe for the next social commerce success story.

Fantasy Shopper is a social shopping game where players discover and share the latest fashion from real-world online and offline retailers. It’s gained a lot of traction since it’s launch last October, especially amongst women and we’ve heard on the grapevine that it was piquing the interest of investors for some months since emerging from the European Seed accelerator HackFWD.

Today that intense interest has been confirmed with a first round of funding led by top tier venture firms Accel Partners and NEA (one of the key investors in Groupon) to enable it to build out engineering and expand into new cities other than London. With NEA co-leading the investment, clearly there is a big opportunity to scale in US cities and elsewhere. The investment is based on a convertible note not equity, which is standard practise when investors want in fast and the round is hotly contested.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A new venture backed by European Seed accelerator HackFWD has launched today. Fantasy Shopper is a new social shopping game where players discover and share the latest fashion from real-world online retailers. Look out shopping addicts this is seriously addictive. On Fantasy Shopper, users spend Fantasy Money to buy virtual clothing, create outfits and stock out their virtual wardrobe. Launching first in the UK with over 100,000 virtual items from 40 retailers in clothes, accessories and sports goods, the game takes the users from shopping in London to other major world destinations. The game is pretty social as users get to share their purchases and create outfits.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch