ShopSocial, the latest venture started by BuzzLogic co-founder Todd Parsons, has raised $1.2 million in financing.
The company, not be confused with ShopSocially (which also just landed funding), is building a platform that it says converges advertising, commerce and social recommendations.
You won’t be able to learn much about its plans by browsing the ShopSocial website, but Parsons briefly demoed the platform, and it definitely has some potential in my opinion.
Basically, ShopSocial enables brands and merchants to include buttons within display advertising units or on product pages that enables people to share and recommend products and services with their friends (via email, Facebook or Twitter).
In return for sharing, the people who help distribute deals for items receive rewards, which can eventually come in many forms (think Amazon gift cards, direct discounts for whatever the advertisers sells, etc.).
Here’s how Parsons puts it:
“We aim to power social commerce and rewards for brands in whatever environment their customers prefer to engage.”
In addition to a means for distribution, ShopSocial says it can also enable secure transactions (like a limited-period sale or a collective buying effort for a given product) within ‘merchandising windows’ on whichever site implements them.
You can find some screenshots below, but please note that these are demonstrations and not live implementations, which ShopSocial will start rolling out this quarter.
The funding round was led by Metamorphic Ventures and joined by X/Seed Capital as well as several, unnamed angel investors.
We enable brands to reward their customers for buying & sharing offers with friends across all media (display ads, commerce sites, fan pages).
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