The Spark That Ignites Social Commerce?

Recently, Amazon unveiled Spark, a social network focused on—what else—shopping. While other social platforms started with friends interacting, and now hope to add ecommerce, Amazon began with shopping and now wants to make it social.

Here’s what you need to know about Spark.

• Spark is centered on a feed of visual posts, organized by interest.
• Members post images of recent purchases or things they are thinking about buying and others can like or comment.
• Spark’s polling feature lets people ask friends’ opinion about whether they should buy an item.
• Users can make purchases right in the app, with just two clicks. That’s more streamlined than buying via other social networks.
• Anyone can look at the Spark feed, but only Prime members can post, comment, or buy.
• Brands are not yet allowed on Spark, but early adopters are leveraging influencers to post their products.
• There are 80 million Amazon Prime members who spend an average of $600 more annually than non-Prime shoppers, so Spark users are an attractive target market.
• Forecasters project that over 50% of ecommerce dollars will flow through Amazon by 2021.
• Spark is currently only available as a feature within Amazon’s iPhone app.

Sources: Adweek 2017,Business2Community 2017, Forbes 2017, Media Shift 2017, Motley Fool 2017