E-commerce is becoming more social and more connected to the offline world
电子商务愈加趋于社交化，且与现实世界联系更加紧密
Sep 9th 2010
A valiant explorer of the commerce-technology frontier
商务技术前沿勇敢的探索者
THOSE who cherish privacy will recoil in horror, but for digital exhibitionists it is a dream. At Swipely, a web start-up, users can now publish their purchases. Whenever they swipe their credit or debit card (hence the service’s name), the transaction is listed on the site—to be discussed by other users. “Turn purchases into conversations” is the firm’s mantra.
Swipely is among the latest entrants in the growing field of social commerce. Firms in this market combine e-commerce with social networks and other online group activities. They aim to transform shopping both online and off. Angus Davis, Swipely’s boss, points out that the internet has already disrupted the content industry. Commerce will be next, he says.
The first generation of e-commerce sites, which hit the web in the late 1990s, were essentially digitised mail-order catalogues. Websites like Epinions collected user reviews and recommendations, but they did not sell anything—and many collapsed during the dotcom crash. Only Amazon brought together selling and social feedback, to great effect. By means of collective filtering, it made suggestions based on other buyers’ purchases.
The second generation of e-commerce firms is quite different. Few emerged from Silicon Valley. Indeed, they tend to have offline roots, and sometimes seek to drive customers to actual shops. Many make their money from flash sales—brief offers of steep discounts on products—that are advertised to registered members.
The pioneer of flash sales, Vente Privée, grew out of the French apparel industry (the name means “private sale”). Even today, its centre of gravity is offline, says Jacques-Antoine Granjon, Vente Privée’s boss, who founded the firm in 2001 along with seven partners. Hundreds of designers, photographers and hairstylists organise its online sales events. After a slow start, Vente Privée has been growing quickly. Its five local sites in Europe have more than 12m members and are expected to bring in about €800m ($1 billion) in revenues this year.
Vente Privée’s success has inspired others. The best known is Gilt Groupe, which emulates the sample sales of luxury retailers in New York, where it is based. Gilt is smaller than Vente Privée. It has only 2.5m members and expects to turn over between $400m and $500m in revenues this year. Gilt wants to become a platform for all sorts of social commerce, says Susan Lyne, its boss. It recently launched several local sites in America, offering “deals of the day”.
Gilt Groupe is straying into the territory of another clutch of city-based e-commerce sites, which facilitate collective buying. Every day these sites offer the service of a local business—a restaurant meal, a spa-treatment, the rental of an expensive car—at a discount of up to 90% (they generally keep half of the sale price). But a deal is struck only if a minimum number of members pounce. Buyers thus have an interest in spreading the word, which they do mostly on social networks.
Gilt Groupe现已转向另一类以城市为主的电子商务网站，这类网站为集体性购买提供便利。网站每天提供一家当地服务，如某餐馆的一餐饭、温泉疗养、租用昂贵的轿车，并且最多可以给予9折优惠（他们通常赚取销售价格的一半）。但必须在有一定会员数目购买的情况下，交易才可达成。因此买家会热衷于将消息转告给其他人，且通常通过社交网站。
Many such sites have sprung up. The most successful is Groupon (a combination of the words “group” and “coupon”, which buyers print out to pay for their service). Although the firm launched only in late 2008, it already operates some 230 local websites in 29 countries and boasts 15m subscribers. Flush with money from investors, it has embarked on a global land-grab, buying Groupon clones in other countries, such as Germany’s CityDeal.
Groupon is more about people than technology. It grew out of The Point, a Chicago-based website that offers tools to organise collective action. The firm employs a worldwide sales force of nearly 2,000 to identify interesting local merchants and 150 writers to describe the offers. It wants to be the company that finally allows small businesses to participate in e-commerce, explains Rob Solomon, its president.
Yet it may be a third generation of social-shopping sites that really deserves the label, says Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research. The latest batch of firms try to build their business on top of the “social graph”: the network of friends spun on social networks. They make use of virtual currencies and the growing popularity of smart-phones, which can track consumers’ location.
ModCloth, which sells clothing from independent designers, has an active forum on Facebook and lets customers vote on which products the site should stock. Lockerz, another upstart, pays members “pointz” if they watch videos with advertisements, invite friends and do things with them. They can then use this currency to obtain discounts. Similarly, Shopkick rewards consumers for offline activities such as visiting stores and scanning products with their smart-phones.
ModCloth主要销售独立设计师设计的服装，它在Facebook上有一个非常活跃的论坛，并且会让顾客投票，来决定网站应该进那些货。另一家刚起步的公司Lockerz，为鼓励会员观看带广告的视频、邀请朋友以及参与网站活动，他们会给会员一些“积分”。会员便可用这些“积分”换取折扣。同样，Shopkick也会回馈消费者的线下活动，比如去参观实体店，或通过智能手机浏览商品。
For the new generation of e-commerce firms, the offline world is as important as the online one. Swipely is a good example. By uploading transaction data, the start-up makes it easy for customers to tell their friends how they are spending their money in the real world, something they probably would not do if they had to type all the data in. At the same time, customers can keep those transactions secret that they do not want to share.
Will making shopping more social really disrupt commerce as much as Mr Davis expects? It is hard to predict whether the second and third generations of e-commerce sites will continue their rapid growth. Consumers may tire of flash sales, as they did of online auctions. Even collective buying may have its limits. One of Groupon’s biggest problems is that tens of thousands of local firms want to be featured, but each of its sites offers only one deal per day. The outfit has started to personalise some of its sites, meaning that different users will see different deals depending on things like age, sex and interests. But if personalisation goes too far, and users see only the sort of things they already knew they wanted, this kind of shopping could become less fun.
Whatever the fate of individual firms and sales models, e-commerce is bound to become more social, predicts Sonali de Rycker of Accel Partners, a venture-capital firm. Retailing has several persistent problems: the high cost of attracting visitors, the low probability that they become buyers and the difficulty of getting them to come back. Sociable e-commerce offers potential solutions to all of them. So expect your favourite site to add social features, whereas many of the pioneers will end up with arrows in their backs, as innovators often do.
来自创业投资公司Accel Partners的Sonali de Rycker预测到，无论私人公司和销售模式的命运如何，电子商务一定会更加趋于社交化的。零售业有几个顽固问题：吸引人们来逛的开销很高，来逛的人又不太消费，且让他们再次光顾也很难。社交型的电子商务便为所有这些问题提供了潜在的解决方案。所以期待你最喜欢的网站也添加些社交功能吧，只是就像那些创新者一样，先锋往往最易受到攻击。
2.
原文：A valiant explorer of the commerce-technology frontier
译文：商务技术前沿勇敢的探索者
评：商务有很多方面的技术吧？这里的commerce指的是销售、推广、开拓渠道方面的吧。所以是否commerce-technology“营销手段、策略”等方面的处理比较好？
【1】
原文：THOSE who cherish privacy will recoil in horror,
译文：看重隐私的人可能会敬而远之，
探讨：
避尤不及 --- recoil & horror都是有厌恶、害怕的意思
敬而远之 --- 可能只是表示不认同，但不带感情。
【2】
原文：for digital exhibitionists it is a dream
译文：没有问题，意思都出来了、
探讨：但那些数码控们，终于能够一尝夙愿，大秀特秀了。（中文的四字控。。。）
【3】
原文：At Swipely, a web start-up, users can now publish their purchases.
译文：在新创办的购物信息分享网Swipely上，用户现在可以发布他们的购物信息。
探讨：中文前后信息重复，而原文并无。
【4】
原文：Whenever they swipe their credit or debit card
译文：每当他们刷爆自己的信用卡或借记卡
探讨：
1. 最多是重重的刷，单词本身或语境均无刷爆的意味在内。
2. 个人感觉原文作者使用这个词的用意在于强调，对这些网站来说，every piece of info of buying counts，因为这些社区网站靠的就是“太山不让土壤，故能成其大；河海不择细流，故能就其深”的每一条信息的积累。
【5】
原文：is the firm’s mantra
译文：是这个公司的理念
探讨：是口号吧？个人感觉上，和理念还是有点区别。口号是喊给客户听的，理念是内部治理的。
【6】
原文：Swipely is among the latest entrants in the growing field of social commerce.
译文：Swipely也是最近一批进入社会化电子商务这一领域的企业。
探讨：语境上，growing field的意思没出来。、
【7】
原文：Firms in this market combine e-commerce with social networks and other online group activities. They aim to transform shopping both online and off.
译文：在这个市场中，公司会将电子商务与社交网络或其他网络活动团体结合，为了达到线上线下都能购物的目的。
探讨：
1. 中文“...，以达到XXX目的”VS“为了达到XXX目的，...”。所以，“为了达到XXX的目的”不能放在后半句。
【8】
原文：Angus Davis, Swipely’s boss, points out that the internet has already disrupted the content industry. Commerce will be next, he says.
译文：因特网已经搅乱了内容产业，下一步会向商务进军的。
探讨：
1. 商务？很多方面了吧？可能这里单只其中的消费类市场。
2. 推荐加一个"content industry"的译注。参看： http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_industry
THOSE who cherish privacy will recoil in horror
大概查了一下，敬而远之是尊敬但愿意接近的意思，的确语气不够强硬。
Whenever they swipe their credit or debit card
我又重新好好查了查swipe这个词的含义：If you swipe a credit card or swipe card through a machine, you pass it through a narrow space in the machine so that the machine can read information on the card's magnetic strip.
说到底就是“刷”的意思。全都去改成刷好了...一开始我没查英英词典，就照着英汉给的解释“重击”来瞎推测~
我又查了查，commerce的英文解释：commerce is the acativies and procedures involved in buying and selling things.
如果单限制于“消费类市场”觉得又太小了，感觉用“商业”会稍微好一些。“商业”的《现代汉语词典》解释：以买卖方式使商品流通的经济活动。
蓝色部分的“线上线下”，形式上倒是忠实了（online or off）就是意思反而晦涩了，不如白一点，译为“网络上和现实生活中的”。。。
读着读着，因为出现了蛮多次，觉得还是保留这种简洁的译法吧
The second generation of e-commerce firms is quite different. Few emerged from Silicon Valley. Indeed, they tend to have offline roots, and sometimes seek to drive customers to actual shops. 试：第二代电子交易公司则截然不同。只有少数几家在硅谷兴起。的确，它们大部分都与网络没有关系，而且还会找机会鼓励消费者去实体店。
这里提到硅谷是要与offline root作对比，所以应该强调下”只有少数几家“吧。
其中最有名的是来自纽约的Gilt Groupe：“来自”改为“位于”
The most successful is Groupon (a combination of the words “group” and “coupon”, which buyers print out to pay for their service).
试：最成功的是团宝网Groupon（Grounpon一词是"group"团队和"coupon"优惠劵的组合，买家可以通过打印出的赠劵来获取服务）。
这家公司虽然仅仅成立于2008年的下旬：这家公司虽然在2008年下旬才成立
Yet it may be a third generation of social-shopping sites that really deserves the label,
试：也许只有这第三代社交网站才真正配得上这个名称吧。
the lable应该是social-shopping这个名称或头衔吧
flash sale：查了下，译为”快闪销售“
users see only the sort of things they already knew they wanted, this kind of shopping could become less fun.
试：用户只能看到他们已经知道的自己想要的东西，这样一来，这种购物方式便不那么有趣了。
觉得前边貌似没必要分开
新手必读
ECO 招聘启事
