Have you used or would you consider using a video commerce platform now or in the near future?

@anamika_chaudhary2 Video commerce platforms allow people to live stream their products and sell them in real-time to buyers. A bit like Instagram or Tiktok, yet with in-video purchasing functionalities. These plaforms are predominelty popular in China, where shopping is seen as entertaiment. Where as in the Western market we tend to consume products through browsing, and then purchasing. We do have shopping channels like QVC over here, yet video commerce hasn't yet seen much traction or growth, due to the cultural differences and shopping habit differentations. Such platforms are: - Taobao - Popshop.live - Amazon Live - Instagram Shoppable - Pinduoduo - Shoploop - Grip - Kuaishou Technology

@pauljones60 It's an interesting market, I view such products working very differently as they do in China over in the EMEA and USA regions. So I believe it will be a while until we see a product in such regions, that's executed in a way that caters to viewers and sellers needs. Targeting such different perceptions and behavioural shopping habits means developing an entirely different style of platform and experience. We also have very different expectations of quality control and customer service. Popshop.live is a good example of a US product, where giveaways and affiliate selling and Etsy style products are sold. Yet I've not yet seen a product that I could see adding value enough to gain a network effect in the general e-commerce and marketplace space. Have you used any of these platforms before?

@duncanaforbes thanks for the explanation. Hadn't heard about these platforms before this, but they sound really promising. Not sure if anything like this exists in India yet. And QVC still works there?? 🤔 I thought that was an old times concept specially after people are switching to OTT platforms

@anamika_chaudhary2 it's ok. It still exists, and there are a couple of platforms in India which have recently been getting funding. I'd probably be better to call it shoppable video or live streaming commerce, yet I feel the general term will become more generic overtime. Yes QVC is quite an old platform, though still has quite a wide customer base albeit aging, between 35 - 64 predominantly women. They do also live stream on their website these days too. Worth a read to understand their customer base as of 2016: https://www.pymnts.com/news/reta... Andreessen Horowitz published a great introductory article back in December. Worth a read: [Link updated] https://a16z.com/2019/12/05/vide...

@duncanaforbes I see what you are talking about. That's really the topic to think about! I've used taobao in retail

@teodeleanu good to see you reviewed all these. Yes, there are various similarities to teleshopping, though, like everything, this is just evolution. Similar to how we moved on from the fax to email and vice versa. Like we use various different video-on-demand subscriptions such as Netflix, Disney, Hulu or Amazon Prime Video. After Vine we evolved into Instagram and Snapchat, then Tiktok. I'd add that these different platforms end up acting like channels, where we choose between our interests and topics, and in this case with Chinese live-streaming commerce platforms, Food and Fishing channels for shopping seem to be some of the most popular So with Instagram Shopping, the obvious next move for Instagram will be the affiliate shopping market, using their influencer market to boost sales through advertising (https://www.digitalmarketnews.co...). During your review of the suggested products, did you play about with them? If so, what did you think? I'd suggest Taobao, and Grip [https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/%E... ] quite hard to find that one, for the best Chinese market products. Grip is very smooth, though the content is typical of the culture over there. Whilst Popshop.live is showing some interesting commonalities. ... In terms of your SaaS question in your other comment, I'd likely say that there will be various monetisation models surround such products in the west. There are lots of untapped methods, that could reduce advertising models and improve the whole ethical and privacy issues that surround many social commerce platforms in general.

@andybeard this is really interesting, thank you for sharing. I'd say that with shoppable video commerce, the free content requirement becomes less of an issue. Since it works more or less like most marketplace platforms with fees for products .etc With regards to policing user-generated content, this is definitely a hard and vast topic. Especially with the many social platforms, large and small struggling with this on an on-going basis. Bringing in stricter community guidelines, similar to Reddit has done over the years is one solution, along with easier methods for people to flag and report content. Though this doesn't remove you from the many cultural issues/barriers. Where there are many views, and ways of interacting or communicating with each other, that you have to consider. Along with language barriers. So yes a very complicated area, which largely I don't believe you can ever entirely create a perfect solution for, especially one that considers vast pool for users to mould a platform around when moderation is concerned anyway. Distribution, definitely many different possibilities for marketing based solutions, especially with widgets and embeds again. Though this is down the feature requests, and what other products businesses and freelancers end up needing to extend the potential of video commerce. haha... I'd love to learn more about that burning man story, did you ever hear from this developer again, and did they ditch you for another company? So many questions. Seems like quite the Silicon Valley (SitCom) episode.

@duncanaforbes I didn't speak to him though I think our CEO had some limited contact. We were left without any real dev team for the second time that year... in some ways it was worse than anything that was ever on Silicon Valley (SitCom) The free option was an issue for us because we wanted users to be able to sell from our platform without paying anything upfront. If you have strict rules fine... but then you have to police them. The distribution of whatever widget you create is of vital importance. What is the point of a widget that can only be used on your own site, or an affiliate has difficulty embedding? I just dug up an old Stackexchange thread. https://stackoverflow.com/questi... As of 2016 there were no plans, and I haven't seen anything new on Facebook. Maybe something something is possible with Twitter cards now.

@baybayin great to hear you will be using Popshop, I've signed up, yet I'm not based in New York. So would interesting to hear your feedback as a seller, when you have used it. Haven't heard of Kumu, what would you say are the disadvantages and advantages of this platform? haha... Why was Facebook Live awkward as hell?

@kennethjustin14 the above comments cover a lot. Though in terms of my reasoning for deciding to do this poll. I'm interested in learning whether people would use such a solution currently or within next 12 months. I carried out a similar poll back in January, the response rate was not as great as today. With the outcome being that people were not very interested in such a product in the US and EMEA regions. Covid seems to have changed peoples stance however, which is interesting.