Verishop launches social media feed
- Sara Fischer, author of Axios Media Trends
Photo: Verishop
Verishop, the luxury e-commerce site created by former Snapchat chief business officer Imran Khan, is launching a social network within its app on Monday, Khan told Axios.
Why it matters: Verishop's aim is to create an online experience akin to a digital shopping mall. To do that, it needs to create a shopping experience that's much more social and curated than what's offered via eBay or Amazon's shopping experiences.
Yes, but: Adding user-generated content to Verishop's curated feed poses some risk.
- Khan told Axios that the company will filter for potentially misleading or harmful content using both artificial intelligence and human review.
- Users will be able to report bad content. Content which is flagged by users will automatically be removed once flagged by a user until it is manually reviewed.
Details: Starting Monday, the company will allow brands and users to upload photos and videos of merchandise and lifestyle content, with the idea of creating a social shopping network for people tag products in their posts, share curated collection boards, and follow people and brands that inspire them.
- Users will be able to save collections — groups of photos and videos — to their personal shopping profiles and follow influencers and brands that can do the same.
- Users will receive profile and product recommendations via a "For you" feed. A separate "Following" feed will show brands, influencers and users they chose to follow.
Be smart: Chinese tech giants like Alibaba have pioneered incorporating e-commerce and payments with their their social media and video apps.
- American tech giants, like Instagram, Facebook and Google are pushing aggressively into shopping amid the pandemic, as more retail business moves virtually.
- These companies started out by accruing mass user bases, and then later pushed to monetize those loyal users via advertising and now, commerce.
- Verishop is doing the opposite by launching a shopping marketplace first and a social media experience around it second.
The big picture: The company, which launched in July 2019, has been boosted by the transition to e-commerce during the pandemic.
- It now houses nearly 1,000 independent and direct-to-consumer brands across all lifestyle categories (home, fashion, beauty, etc.), including household names like Madewell and AllSaints.
- In July, Axios reported that the company was expected to sell $50 million worth of goods by the year's end.
- About two-thirds of its shoppers are under the age of 35.
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