PopularMedia launching SocialNotes for sharing shopping links
Coming soon: New widget enables users to share their shoe links, get feedback.
On Monday at Supernova, Google's Joe Kraus gave a hypothetical example of how online shopping could become more social. On Wednesday, I saw the real thing: a new widget from PopularMedia that makes shopping sites a bit more personal.
The SocialNotes product is a widget reminiscent of ShareThis and AddThis; it's code that publishers can drop in to their sites that makes it easy for visitors to send pages off to friends or to embed them in social-network profile pages or blogs. The SocialNotes widget is somewhat more interesting because when the e-mail recipients of a notification go to the site in question, they get a little message box on the page with a personal note from the sender, as well as a way to enter a reply, which is then e-mailed back.
Implementing SocialNotes will require publishers to do a bit of coding, since they have to define where the message boxes will appear when e-mail recipients click through to the pages. The base service will be free; PopularMedia will try to up-sell users to its "advanced social-media marketing solutions, priced on a subscription basis," CEO Jim Calhoun told me.
The full, two-way version of SocialNotes will launch next month. If you want an early look, e-mail beta@popularmedia.com and ask nicely.
See also: ActiveWeave Stickis.