Local Shopping Is Becoming More Mobile and Social

This StreetFight article provides some interesting food for thought on where local search and SoLoMo commerce is going. Facebook has the potential to dominate this turf by doing what no other provider can do and integrating the social layer with local search.

One thing in the discussion that got my attention was the topic about inaccurate local venues as they relate to FB brand pages. This is a problem for large chains with many venues. In reality, a lot of large chains don't even claim their FB community Places. We solve this at OfferDrop by linking community and non-community FB Places to their FB brand pages. This way when a corporate FB Brand Page publishes an Offer or Post, we link it to the local FB place whether or not that Place is claimed by the corporate chain or not. This way when you search for FB Offers and Posts locally, in OfferDrop, you can see them linked to the offers that come from the Brand Page. This benefits shoppers and merchants.

OfferDrop is currently available for the iPhone, Android and web. Visit our website to download the OfferDrop mobile app and get started discovering all the great Facebook Offers around you. Also stay tuned for our Merchant Offers Platform coming soon that will allow local merchants to reach and communicate more effectively with their Facebook shoppers.

OfferDrop: Local Facebook Commerce for Merchants

We are pleased to announce the latest release of our OfferDrop Facebook Commerce platform which includes updates to our consumer mobile apps and merchant tools. This release, includes an improved OfferDrop Shopping Wall that visually aggregates your Facebook shopping activity, so you never miss a thing your friends are finding and sharing from local merchants. This release also includes a beta launch of our new merchant tool that allows business owners and Facebook Page admins to manage and organize their local Facebook Offers and compaigns from one easy to use interface.

OfferDrop allows shoppers to search for local Facebook Offers from local merchants and manage saved and claimed Offers from one convenient mobile app. With this latest release of OfferDrop, we have enabled tighter integration with Facebook so you can see all the offers your friends are sharing on Facebook. No more hunting through your email inbox for claimed offers or scanning through your Facebook news feed to see what offers your friends and local merchants are sharing.

The OfferDrop Shopping Wall is a fun and powerful Pinterest like visual aggregation feed within OfferDrop. It allows you to visually see all the offers your friends are sharing and liking from all the merchants around you. No more scanning through your liked Facebook merchant pages to find new offers or waiting for offers to pop-up in your Facebook news feed. Now everything is organized for you on the OfferDrop Shopping Wall and available on your mobile phone. That is not mention all the other great OfferDrop Facebook features such as following your favorite shoppers, favorite local merchants, push notifications from merchants and friends you follow so that you are always on top of the lastest deals around you. And if you are an iPhone user, then you also get to manage all your offers using Apple Passbook as an added benefit.

For local merchants this release allows you to create and manage Facebook Offers for all your Facebook Pages from one easy to use tool. Create new Facebook Offers and promote them all from one interface. Attached QR codes to your offers to track and manage redemption programs and enable Apple Passbook support for your iPhone customers. Future releases will include more analytics and redemption/rewards managment features.

More About OfferDrop:

OfferDrop turbo charges Facebook Offers by making more local and connects shoppers with local merchants. Try it now and discover all the great Facebook Offers and merchants around you today. Never miss a nearby offer and stay connected with your friends to find all the popular Facebook Offers and merchants.

Local merchants, small and large, can benefit from OfferDrop, by reaching and communicating with their local customers using OfferDrop's geo-location powered social apps and tools. OfferDrop allows merchants to advertise to local shoppers using Facebook while reaching local customers on mobile devices. Merchants can create local social buzz to increase foot traffic and improve local brand awareness. OfferDrop includes tools to make it easier for merchants to create, manage and track their Facebook Offers. Reach more local customers using tools such as Apple Passbook and track redeemed offers using OfferDrop's Facebook merchant tools.

OfferDrop is currently available for the iPhone, Android and desktop/web. Visit our website to download the OfferDrop mobile app and get started discovering all the great Facebook Offers around you from local merchants. Merchants can also get started using OfferDrop's merchant tools to tap into the full potential of Facebbok social commerce to reach and communicate more effectively with their Facebook shoppers.

OfferDrop Team
http://www.offerdrop.com

OfferDrop: Your Facebook Offers App

OfferDrop is happy to announce our latest mobile app release for the iPhone. With release 3.2.4, Facebook users can now see Facebook Offers their friends are claiming, sharing and liking on Facebook. The OfferDrop Shopping Wall now shows everything your friends are sharing and claiming, so you never miss a thing.

OfferDrop allows shoppers to search for local Facebook Offers from local merchants and manage their saved and claimed Offers from one convenient mobile app. With this latest release of OfferDrop, we have enabled tighter integration with Facebook so you can see all the Offers your friends are sharing. No more hunting through your email inbox for claimed offers or scanning through your Facebook news feed to see what Offers your friends are sharing.

The OfferDrop Shopping Wall is a fun and powerful Pinterest like feature within OfferDrop. It allows you to visually see all the Offers your friends are sharing and liking from all the merchants you like and follow. No more scanning through your liked Facebook merchant pages to find new Offers or wait for Offers to pop-up in your Facebook news feed. Now everything is organized for you on the OfferDrop Shopping Wall. That is not mention all the other great OfferDrop Facebook features such as push notifications from merchants you follow and friends you follow.

OfferDrop makes Facebook Offers more fun and more social. Try it now and discover all the great Facebook Offers and Facebook merchants around you today. Never miss a nearby Facebook Offer and stay connected with your friends to find all the popular Facebook Offers and merchants.

OfferDrop is currently available for the iPhone, Android and web. Visit our website to download the OfferDrop mobile app and get started discovering all the great Facebook Offers around you. Also stay tuned for our Merchant Offers Platform coming soon that will allow local merchants to reach and communicate more effectively with their Facebook shoppers.

OfferDrop Team
http://www.offerdrop.com

OfferDrop for Android

OfferDrop is happy to announce a new release of our Android Facebook Shopping app. With version 1.2 for Android, Facebook shoppers can now more easily search and discover great Facebook Offers nearby. This release make it easier to search for Facebook Offers by category and to share with other Facebook friends.

This release puts Android on the same feature parity with our iPhone version. So if you are an Android user, download OfferDrop from Google Play and start discovering great deals and coupons from your local Facebook merchants and start sharing with friends. Also check out the new Shopping Wall that makes it fun to see what Offers your friends are claiming.

OfferDrop is currently available for the iPhone and Android. Visit our website to download the mobile app and to learn more. Also stay tuned for our Merchant Offers Platform coming soon that will allow local merchants to reach and communicate more effectively with their Facebook shoppers.

OfferDrop Team
http://www.offerdrop.com

Facebook Offers Continue to Grow

The Facebook Offers service is driving business and changing the way merchants attract customers to their local stores. It has been reported by Facebook that nearly 42 million unique users claimed Facebook Offers since the launch of the service last year. Watch out Groupon and LivingSocial, Facebook Offers are here to stay! See this post for more details on the growth of Facebook Offers:

http://www.dmconfidential.com/the-benefits-of-facebook-offers/

OfferDrop is great services to help you find great Facebook Offers near you and share them with friends. And if you are a local merchant OfferDrop can help you reach more customers by making Facebook Offers easier to manage and by providing powerful integration with Apple Passbook to make it easier for shoppers to be notified of your offers when they are near your local stores.

OfferDrop Team
http://www.offerdrop.com

Passbook Powered Facebook Offers

We are very excited to announce the release of OfferDrop 3.2 for the iPhone. This release provides support for Apple Passbook. This allows Facebook shoppers to save their local Facebook Offers right to their Passbook wallet on their iPhone with just one tap.

This is the perfect combination of technology that makes it easier for Facebook shoppers to mange their coupons and offers in one place. No more hunting for Facebook deals anymore. You can use OfferDrop to search for great nearby Facebook Offers then save your offers to your Passbook wallet. Then anytime you are near the merchant's store, Passbook will remind you of the offer. OfferDrop and Passbook also makes it easy for shoppers to redeem their offers - no more hunting through your emails for Facebook offers!

Our OfferDrop mobile app lets you search and find nearby Facebook Offers right from your mobile phone and save your coupons straight into Passbook. Share with friends to discover more local Facebook offers. Facebook merchants can get in on the action by using OfferDrop to create their own locally enabled Facebook Offers including very easy support for creating and managing Passbook coupons.

Also coming soon we will be providing more powerful merchant tools to allow Facebook merchants to tightly integrate their Facebook Offers and rewards programs with Passbook. Try OfferDrop today and see how easy it is find great Facebook offers near you.

OfferDrop Team
http://www.offerdrop.com

Coupons Just Got Really Social & Local

We have been hard at work here at OfferDrop on what will be an awesome mobile application for both shoppers and merchants. OfferDrop has always had the mission to transform local commerce and bring shoppers together in a fun and beneficial social network while making it easier for merchants to reach their local consumer base. With our impending launch, we are close to delivering on the first step of our vision.

We are now just about there. Stay tuned for the new radical makeover of the OfferDrop mobile app and platform. Check our website for a sneak peak on what we have cooking.

We believe the Facebook platform and smartphone revolution are still in their infancy and have virtually unbounded potential to change not just how friends and family communicate but how people shop smarter and how merchants reach local shoppers.

Commerce solutions such as Facebook Offers and Apple Passbook will transform how people shop and share in their every day lives. These platforms will also change how merchants reach their local consumers and at OfferDrop we will be there to deliver awesome solutions for both shoppers and merchants leveraging these foundations. Stay tuned, the ride is just getting started.

OfferDrop Team
http://www.offerdrop.com

A Better Way to Shop - OfferDrop

OfferDrop is a new way to shop with your mobile device that puts the power in your hands (your mobile phone) for finding the best prices and deals from local merchants while allowing you to share and communicate with other shoppers in your local community. Our goal is to help you save on the things you buy every day while learning and sharing with other shoppers on where to shop for the best products and best prices nearby.

We believe that OfferDrop will be a revolution in shopping by allowing consumers to communicate with merchants and leverage mobile technology to improve the overall shopping experience. Many solutions provide shoppers with tools or exclusive deals to help them shop better. This is great, but OfferDrop takes this a step further by integrating your social network and micro-location based services to make shopping more engaging and informative while improving the overall in-store experience.

The goal with OfferDrop is to democratize the shopping experience. No more waiting for the best deals or coupons to be sent to you by merchants and stores when they see fit. Now you use the power of your mobile phone and social network to find the best prices and best products nearby for the things you buy every day.

Stay tuned for more news from OfferDrop. This is only the first step in many exciting things that OfferDrop will deliver to evolve the shopping experience.

OfferDrop is currently available for the iPhone and a beta versin is available on Android. Visit our website to download the mobile app and to learn more. Also stay tuned for our Merchant Offers Platform coming soon that will allow local merchants to reach and communicate more effectively with their Facebook shoppers.

http://www.offerdrop.com

Social Frictionless Commerce

OfferDrop listed as example of new social mobile shopping revolution.

"The shopping experience is in the process of a full-scale revolution. Social recommendations, F-commerce and dynamic pricing are dominating e-commerce while contactless payments and virtual wallets are evidence that digital technology is fundamentally changing the real-world shopping experience." Read more.

http://www.offerdrop.com

OfferDrop Connecting Mobile Shoppers and Retailers

OfferDrop (previously known as ShopZooky) is recognized for its disruptive influence on local retailers and social shoppers.

"...the creators of OfferDrop now offer a social shopping platform designed to counter this trend by enabling direct contact with the consumer...". Read full article.

http://www.offerdrop.com

How Mobile Apps can Help Local Retailers

Every Christmas shopping season many big and small retailers get more nervous on how the internet and mobile technology is changing the way consumers shop. The internet is not new a phenomena. It has been growing at a steady pace since Amazon and others took root during the dotcom days. However, I think this holiday season is different. It has really hit home with many in the retail industry that not only are shoppers looking to do more of their shopping online, but they are changing their shopping habits altogether.

It comes as no surprise that some things are easy to buy online such as books, video games and electronics, to name a few. Sales of such products have been growing steadily online (and shrinking at at brick and mortar retailers). There are plenty of examples of physically retailers shutting down and either moving everything online or just going out of business. Again this is not a big surprise as this has been growing season by season. However, what is really getting the traditional retailers even more concerned now is a new dynamic that is coming together to create a perfect storm that sending more people online than before. Mobile applications are the new driver for a new way to shop that people are starting to utilize more and more.

With smartphones now common place, people are getting accustomed to using their mobile devices to comparison shop while they are in their local retail stores. The problem is, more an more people are using local stores as showrooms and then making their purchases online. The combination of the internet, smartphones, barcode scanners, online product lookup/comparison, social networking/sharing is making it hard for local merchants and stores to close transactions in their physical stores. The consumer just has too many tools and too much information at their finger tips.

Some retailers like Target are resorting to some radical methods to hold the consumer captive once they enter their stores. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Target is an example how things can get a little extreme. Target more or less wants to isolate the consumer and wall them off from the internet to limit what they can do with their mobile apps once they enter Target. One can understand the situation that Target and other local merchants are in when it comes to competing with the online guys, but I argue this is the wrong way to go about it and will end badly for those that do not embrace the new social mobile shopping evolution.

Sure, Target can force their vendors to create custom brands with unique UPC codes so that products become hard to search and compare online (and with other local stores). But this will not work in the long run. All that Target is doing is isolating themselves much the same way AOL did by not fully embracing the internet and mobile/social shopping. The walled garden will not work. It will come down sooner or later. At OfferDrop we understand this first hand. While we use UPC codes for product lookup in our mobile apps, for example, we do not rely on this and plan to make searching and comparing much more unstructured in the future as we move to more powerful search and comparison tools that do not depend on UPC barcodes in the future.

Anyway, I got off the subject. Local merchants need to embrace the mobile and social shopping dynamic not try to contain it when shoppers enter their stores. Instead what Target and all other local merchants should do is go social and connect with their customers in ways that the online guys can't. Do not just push exclusive coupons and deals to consumers, interact with them at a personal level when they enter your stores. For example, if a shopper scans a product in your store and posts about it their friends or social network, the local merchant should be part of this social network and follow up with the customer and offer them a coupon or see if shopper asked a question and give them an answer about the product right on the spot. Or followup with the customer after they leave, but the main point is that the local merchant should be part of the shoppers local social network. Embrace social and mobile applications do not hide behind them or just offer your own walled garden app. And this goes beyond just offering coupons and deals. Make it personal with the shopper. This can be especially powerful for smaller merchants who can get more intimate with their shoppers and their local shopping network.

This is our battle cry at OfferDrop. We want to empower the local merchant (big and small) and allow them to connect in meaningful ways with their local customers. We believe local shopping has as much to gain from mobile shopping tools and social networks as do online virtual stores. Get on OfferDrop and start making shopping social.

http://www.offerdrop.com

Coupons Gone Wild

OfferDrop recently introduced support for socializing coupons. Now, coupons are an interesting beast that come in different shapes and sizes. You got your web coupons, paper coupons, store coupon, manufacturer coupons...etc. Enough to say you got all sorts of coupons out there and different ways to redeem them. And redeeming them has its own challenges. It is not clear if any real standards will evolve with web coupons either. Coupons have historically been a free for all and web coupons look no different.

If your favorite store has an optical scanner you might be lucky enough that they can even scan a coupon barcode right off your phone's display. If they don't have an optical scanner (many only have laser scanners) you are probably out of luck and have to watch the cashier painfully enter the coupon code by hand. Maybe in the future you can just shake you phone or point it at the direction of the casher and your coupons will flow (don't hold your breath for NFC).

Well, with OfferDrop we where not totally sure what to do with coupons when we first looked at adding the concept to the OfferDrop network. Our main goal was for people to share what coupons they found in anyway they coude with others in their circle.

We wanted a simple concept, so we decided to make it as flexible as possible. In OfferDrop, you can added a comment to a product posting and simply comment that a product at a particular store has a particular type of coupon available and to describe how or where to find it or maybe even include a URL for it, if it is a web based coupon, for example. If you happen to have the coupon in front of you, you can even take a photo of it and upload it to the OfferDrop network and attach it to the product posting in order share the photo of the coupon with everyone following this product or following you. If you take a good enough picture of the coupon, the end user might even be able to use at the checkout scanner - hold that camera steady! And hopefully the store you are at has an optical scanner.

With this approach to coupons in OfferDrop, we made coupon sharing very open and flexible. People can share just about any kind of coupon offers they find and share them with their friends and followers. How you redeem the coupon can still be a trick, but we will get there one day.

Give OfferDrop a spin and try the coupon sharing feature. If you are a coupon hunter this is a nice way to share what you find with others and let others benefit from your coupon hunting skills.

http://www.offerdrop.com

Leveraging NoSQL Database Scalability

I am excited about announcing support for MongoDB in the OfferDrop cloud. We expect great things from MongoDB in order to drive scalability and performance of OfferDrop mobile and cloud services. Stay tuned for more details. We hope to discuss our adventures with MongoDB and porting from MySQL to NoSQL in the coming months.

I am also quite excited about the MongoDB 2.2 features coming out soon. They will make many of the things we need to power OfferDrop queries and data management possible. We are looking forward to taking advantage of the new aggregation framework. We are also keeping an eye on Amazon's new DynamoDB NoSQL service. Could prove useful especially considering the low cost of infrastructure maintenance.

Go Cloud Computing!

http://www.offerdrop.com

Mobile Shopping Dead or Alive?

Dead might be the wrong word. Actually, mobile and social shopping has yet to be born. Instead, the landscape is littered with a countless variety of mobile shopping apps, none of which are truly social at their center. You have a wide spectrum of apps out there. First you have the utility based apps that help you compare local products and prices with online stores or maybe manage a shopping list - things like that. Then you go to the other end of the spectrum with animated cartoon looking mobile shopping apps that need a user's manual to understand - but cool looking for sure. Some look like something from a Pokemon movie with graphics and characters bouncing and shaking around like an over designed 1990's website. And for the most part, their angle is to push some exclusive deal or offer on to you from some local or online merchant or try to get you to earn some kind of point rewards and win a trinket or two. Maybe I am being a bit harsh, but you be the judge.

None of these social shopping apps are anything close to being social. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but they are not truly social applications and that is what we are missing. Twitter, facebook and foursqare are true social platforms because they depend on the member community to generate the vast majority of their content. They rely on people and merchants to establish relationships between each other and the world around them. The more people that join the more powerful the app/network becomes for everyone (not just the service provider). The current crop of social shopping apps seem to have missed that memo. Instead they are more like a circus act trying to get you into the big top to watch a few fun attractions using some combination of gimmicks, barcode scanners and GPS features. But these kinds of apps will never get ingrained into the psyche and daily habits of people in same way as twitter, facebook, or foursquare. A different approach is needed.

Successful social apps become part of your regular activity and are largely driven by the behavior of the users themselves and the connections users make with each other and with their surroundings. This should be no different for local shopping. Pushing exclusive deals or getting the user to bounce around stores to earn points is a one-way street controlled by the service provider and not a social network. The consumer and local merchant are not empowered and social networks are all about empowering the end user to interact and contribute back to the network. The more people that join the stronger and more valuable the network becomes. And to be clear, what I mean by successful is not just the success of the start-up or online giant that delivers this service, but success for us means the consumer and local merchant are really benefiting and where the social shopping apps makes a difference in their lives from both a financial and quality of life perspective. Twitter has changed the way people behave and express themselves and for social shopping to be successful it needs to do the same. And this also applies for local merchants as well. They stand to benefit greatly from a truly social shopping network where they are not just offering cut throat deals that are not sustainable. Local merchants leveraging an open social shopping network can benefit from the visibility a social network can provide and that is currently only available to the highest advertising bidder. With an open social shopping community everyone benefits from the consumer to the local merchant (not to mention the service provider).

Consider Wikipedia as an example. Wikipedia would be just another online static encyclopedia if not for the vibrant community of contributors and the way Wikipedia empowers users to interact and contribute. Social shopping, for it to really take off and make a lasting impact in people's lives, needs to leverage the consumer and local merchant in a way that empowers them to share and interact with other fellow shoppers, merchants and with their community as a whole.

At OfferDrop, we strongly believe in this model and are passionate about making this type of open social shopping experience available to the consumer and local merchant. Call us rebels or call us crazy, but we plan to shake things up. We might get stepped on and trampled on along the way, but we strongly believe in what we are doing and hope you will join us.

Version 1.3 of OfferDrop is currently available in the Apple store. We are also feverishly working on an Android version and have many new features coming out in version 2.0 that will keep pushing the envelope. Please check out our website and download our app.

http://www.offerdrop.com

Social Shopping Predictions for 2012

Social applications are still exploding in every corner of business and the consumer space. There are dozens if not hundreds of mobile apps that will help you eat better, meet people and just about anything else you can think of. Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare are leading the charge and giving consumers the communication vehicle to connect and share and even in some case learn something or benefit financially.

Social apps geared specially toward shopping are also quite plentiful. You can find apps to help you with everything from finding deals, comparing prices and hunting down coupons. But if you look at the majority of the apps out there, non really bring a true social shopping capability to the table in the sense that they are letting users learn and share with each other when it comes to shopping. What does that mean? It means non of the apps out there are the really equivalent of say Twitter or Facebook when it comes to connecting people and business in an open communication sense. Sure, there are apps that let you find deals and that will push coupons and offers from nearby businesses, but these are all closed ecosystems where it is a one way stream from the network or business to the social end user. But non are truly social in the sense that they are based on a social community dynamic to discover and share the best products and prices nearby. The major social players have all tried to dip their toe into local shopping by letting consumers connect with businesses but they are typically a one way street where the business is driving the interaction by presenting users with deals or offers. The social end user is more of a passive observer and at the mercy of what is presented to them. There is essentially no organic information being created by the social community.

What is fundamentally missing is the ability to empower shoppers to work together and function as a social community that can share and communicate what is going on in their local area when it comes to products and deals nearby. It is fine to receive Groupon type deals and offers from a local business, but you want this complimented with deals users are also discovering and sharing with each other. The consumer needs to be empowered to be an active contributing member in the shopping experience and not just passively sitting by getting trinkets thrown at them when they scan something or make a post. What is needed is a truly vibrant social shopping community that is on equal footing with local businesses when it comes to offering, discovering and sharing deals.

Enter into the picture OfferDrop. Our goal at OfferDrop is to make a platform that will empower consumers along with local businesses to reach each other using the ever evolving social medium. We predict 2012 will be the year when social shopping truly becomes socially driven. We will do all we can at OfferDrop to empower the consumer and empower local businesses to connect and share on an open platform and in an integrated fashion with the other popular social apps we all love to use every day.

Stay tuned for exciting things from OfferDrop in 2012. Shopping just got social and fun!

http://www.offerdrop.com