9 Helpful Resources Learned at Rise of Social Commerence

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I met many cool people and gained several insights from Altimeter's Rise of Social Commerce conference. Here's the list of 9 helpful (or at least very interesting) resources I learned about from the speakers and sidebar conversations:

  1. Homophily - "Birds of a feather flock together." Sinan Aral gave a fascinating presentation about how to maximize word-of-mouth influence and social contagion through online networks. He's written several papers on the subject.
  2. Air Force Counter Blogging Flow Chart - Charlene Li presented this in her Open Leadership presentation. Looking forward to reading her newest book by the same title.
  3. Personalized Cards by Hallmark - Add your own photos and message, tell them where to send this real paper card, and they'll stamp and mail it on any date you want. Can't wait to try it.
  4. ModCloth - indie, retro, vintage apparel.
  5. diapers.com and soap.com - trying to be the Zappos of household basics. Free shipping and easy shopping, but how do they compare on pricing? I did a quick test by Red Lasering items in my bathroom and comparing them to prices on soap.com. Most were also like Zappos (where you can't pay more online), but a few items that had ecoupons were cheaper, and a few more were equal in pricing. Easy navigation and well designed, but know your prices or just embrace the convenience and be willingly pay more.
  6. Polyvore - creative community where anyone can be a stylists. The sight allows you to create your own fashion trends. "Clip + Create + Shop + Share = Polyvore"
  7. Tree of Tenere - how the loneliest tree in the world survive for 300 years.
  8. Making Meals and Memories - Le Crueset's engaging program to encourage customers to share the fun memories associated with their cookware. Love the viral maps at the end of each story.
  9. shopkick - a location-based program that drives traffic to retailers and can't be faked like GPS programs. I just downloaded the app and am headed to Best Buy to collect some kickbucks.

If you attended or watched any of it on ustream, what resources and takeaways did learn?