It’s kindof a big deal, but you’ve probably already heard that a federal judge has delayed, and perhaps killed, the big federal and state anti-trust suit against Facebook. So I’ll report instead that Sprout Social is doing its bit to advance the cause of social commerce by integrating with Shopify and Facebook Shops. Sprout Social users will have easy access to customers’ purchase history while interacting with them through social channels.
Shopify is reducing the share of revenue it takes from app developers on its marketplace. The move follows similar reductions by Apple, Google, and Amazon, who are all under anti-trust pressure that takes high app marketplace fees are prime evidence of monopoly positions. Shopify’s particular change is to cut it’s current 20% fee to zero for developers who earn less than $1 million per year on its App Store and Theme Store.
Unified commerce platform Kibo also has new integrations, although they’re with the Monetate and Certona personalization systems that Kibo already owns. The spawn includes personalized site search, personalized category pages, and predictive visual search. By happy coincidence, I also have this Lucidworks study showing that 78% of shoppers interact with product recommends and 62% often make unplanned purchases based on them.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.