Apple Mulling Online Store with Social Networking
Can online stores become more friendly, more like brick-and-mortar retailers that take personal note of customers? That’s the goal of a new Apple patent application aiming to blend Internet sales and social networking.
The patent, filed in mid-December of 2009 and revealed this week, titled “Enhancing Online Social Atmosphere,” describes online shopping as frequently “sterile and isolating” and not the optimum method for encouraging consumers to loosen their pursestrings. The Cupertino, Calif. company hopes to employ social networking to increase the “linger” factor and make shoppers more sensitive to the buying habits of others.
Among the ideas proposed in the patent application, Apple envisions tracking where customers are in an online store, sharing the data with other users to see what other consumers view as hot or trendy.
Taking another page from social networking, Apple’s patent application describes showing what products other online shoppers are purchasing, permitting consumers to see how many others also like certain hardware or software.
- Via AppleInsider
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
