Via Scoop.it - Online Communities and Social Networks

A few years later, eBay top honchos started talking about something they called ‘Social Commerce’. In an online landscape where ‘Social’ was being added to practically every business and entity that existed on the Web, ‘Social Commerce’ seemed like just another inflated buzz phrase. This is until it sort of seemed to make sense. Max Mancini, who joined the ecommerce site in 2003, was focused on helping realize eBay’s social commerce dream. He described it as “sharing information to create new trust models.” In simple terms, the model that eBay and other auction sites for second hand goods work on is the basic human trust that exists between strangers. Although eBay did start an internet reputation system, it was far from ‘social’, the way we understand social media in today’s world. In fact, the reputation system that helped eBay thrive for many years, by encouraging user-based feedback and evaluation was so wondrous that a Harvard paper was dedicated to the findings and workings of this mechanism.
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