StumbleUpon has silently become the go-to-platform for savvy web marketeers. Why? Look at the picture below. I’m trying to keep my word count down, so I’ll let the pic put in a thousand or so on the issue. Long story short, if you’re not on SU, you need to be. Organically is great, often delivering very low bounce rates, but as with everything worthwhile, it takes a bit of time. That’s why SU offers Paid Discovery. This allows you to pay per impression (which is really a visit). Basically, SU throws in a few paid sites as you stumble your way through the internet. No one’s the wiser…except the marketing guy who just tripled his social media traffic.

There seems to be a new movement in the auto industry that empowers buyers. With sites like TrueCar that provide great pricing information to sites like Ubokia and Cartelligent where dealers and sellers compete against each other to get your business. So I’m trying to figure out if there really is a shift taking place or if these are just trends.

Now with that out of the way, I decided to play around with Facebook Marketplace. I figured if it’s still around it must be kinda popular. That being said, popularity wasn’t really what I wanted to look into – everything Facebook does is popular by most definitions. I was more interested in how it worked. Was this going to really be the amazing marriage of Social and Commerce that many of us were expecting?

Well…not really. In fact, Facebook Marketplace is strikingly similar to any other online classifieds site. People list items for sale. Other people can search for them and buy them. As for integration into the core Facebook experience? Nothing more than is available on most other e-commerce sites. In fact, even less than some sites. For example, if you want to share a listing with your friends, you are only given 4 options: Email, Twitter, Google + (!?!), and Like (the FB kind). To my astonishment, there isn’t a way to post a listing on your wall! There goes any hopes of having new features like “Get your friends to help you get this” or “Poll your friends on what to get”. There is a “Ask your friends” option, but it again falls short of integrating into the Facebook experience in a truly unique way.

So, I was late to the party, and I was still disappointed. The whole idea of Social Commerce, at least in my humble opinion, was to leverage your social network to help in the buying process. Groupon has gotten a lot closer, but they are still focused on getting you to buy something you don’t really want. So I’ll sit here and wait for someone else to come along and finally get it right…

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that buying a car is not fun. Now whether or not you agree with that, I just can’t think of many people talking about how much they enjoy buying a car. On the other hand, I can think of a lot of people that have had awful experiences. From trying to find the right car to haggling with extremely pushy sales people to the mountains of paper work and financing documents, buying a car is not a painless process. That is why I am so excited about what Ubokia is doing in the car buying world!

Now if you want to buy a car (new or used) all you have to do is post a description of the car you want then sellers line up to make you offers and compete for your business.

Negotiating with salespeople is my least favorite part. They are trained negotiators and I am not, so I always feel like I didn’t get the best deal. With Ubokia, I have the power to negotiate on my terms from the comfort of my own computer. Additionally, with several sellers competing for my business, I can stand firm on my price or desired features. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s FREE and they make a donation to CARE for each new member that signs up!

Here’s the way I see it: “You work hard for your money; you shouldn’t have to work hard to spend it too!” and that is what Ubokia is all about.

In my frustration, I decided to rant and rave about this online and foudn 20 million results for “eBay sucks”! Pretty soon I stumbled across this insightful piece by Ben Lang:

“1. Illegitimate feedback

If a buyer gives you a negtive feedback for no reason, you can’t remove it. There goes your entire reputation and sometimes your entire business.

2. Annoying rules

For example in the last 12 hours of an auction you can’t change images. A potential buyer emailed me to notify me that I had put the wrong picture on the auction page. There was no bid but because there were only 10 hours left, I couldn’t change the picture, and what do you know, no sale.

3. Bogus buyers

No more negative feedback for bogus buyers, meaning that buyers who don’t pay for their winning bids cannot be penalized by the seller. This too destroys the entire feedback system…”

Click Here to read Ben’s complete list of reasons to avoid eBay.

“The term collaborative consumption is used to describe an economic model based on sharing, swapping, bartering, trading or renting access to products as opposed to ownership. Technology and peer communities are enabling these old market behaviours to be reinvented in ways and on a scale never possible before. From enormous marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist, to emerging sectors such as social lending (Zopa), peer-to-peer travel (CouchSurfing, Airbnb) and car sharing (Zipcar or peer-to-peer RelayRides), Collaborative Consumption is disrupting outdated modes of business and reinventing not just what people consume but how they consume it.” – Wikipedia

With Collaborative Consumption gaining momentum, it’s time to shift away from specialized services and move to a ubiquitous platform. The whole idea is about saying what you want and what you’re willing to accept in return.

Imagine if I want to buy a car, but I know that I will only be using it on weekdays as a commuter. Financially, I may have a tough time justifying the monthly payment if I am using it primarily as a commuter. But if I could go to my social network and set up collaborative consumption agreement with several other friends who would be willing to lease it from me on the weekends, then it would make a lot more sense financially.

Additionally, nearly everyone has skills that are worth money. Take this example: Steve is a contractor and wants to take his family to Tahoe for a weekend. With the tough economy, business is down for Steve, and he really can’t afford a hotel or to rent a house in Tahoe. Bob has a house in Tahoe, but there are some problems in the house that he can’t really afford to fix right now. Imagine if there were a platform that could connect Bob and Steve with an agreement that Steve would fix some of the problems in the house if Bob let’s him use it for a weekend.

A completely ubiquitous collaborative consumption platform has the potential of turning any person’s time and skill into a valuable commodity and anybody’s stuff into a valuable inventory. The possibilities are limitless! To date there is no way to connect this non-utilized supply with this untapped demand.

Want to be part of something great? Ubokia.com is putting buyers in control. Imagine if you went to a flea market to buy a wheel barrow. You would have to spend hours to make sure that you saw every wheel barrow for sale, or at least you would have to look at a handful to find the right one. This is what buying on the internet has turned into today. Now imagine if you walked into the flea market, announced the type of wheel barrow you wanted and sellers began lining up to make offers to you – on your terms. This is exactly what Ubokia is doing to online buying.

“We have the equation backwards. Instead of focusing on sellers, we should be focusing on individual wants, and building a community to help fulfill them.”

– Scott P. – Founder of Ubokia.com

Read more about Ubokia.com

I LOVE football, especically 49er football. I eat up each peice of NFL news faster than In N Out cheeseburgers, but I have never had the time to really read as much as I would like – enter Twitter. Several months ago, I decided to start following my favorite football reporters, and it has completely satisfied my craving for football news! With TweetDeck, I get real time updates on everything going on in the NFL without sacrificing too much of my time.

After this success, I began to follow other accounts that I thought would be interesting, and for the most part I have been more than pleased with what I have found. So for those of you who still “can’t see why anybody would use twitter”, I strong suggest giving it a try!

As part of my job, I spend a lot of time thinking. I am the Director of Strategy, so as you can probably imagine, I do a lot of strategizing. This mindset doesn’t turn off when I leave work; in fact, it has taken over nearly every aspect of my life. So I figured I might as well put all this thinking to good use by sharing it with anyone willing to read it.

My passions are God, Family, the outdoors, and pretty much anything else I find interesting. So you can expect a pretty random assortment of topics. But it’s my blog, so I don’t need a topic…

I hope you enjoy what I post here, and I hope that some of this is actually interesting if not useful. Feel free to let me know how I’m doing.