At the moment this new Amazon social network is available in the United States and to be able to enjoy its advantages you have to belong to Amazon Prime
There are social networks to share photos, videos, and music. To interact with the world or publish theoretical manifestos. To write about anything and to read. To find a partner. There are social networks for almost everything. Now Amazon presents the link that may have been missing: Spark, its new social network for online shopping. The mobile application allows its users to buy directly within it. It also allows the sharing of photos or videos of the purchased products.
In the same way, in the best Facebook-style, you can tag other people in the publications, as a suggestion. Spark’s premise is to bring together communities of users with the same tastes and interests. In addition, you can interact through comments, leaving opinions, recommendations and suggestions. It is also allowed to upvote or disapprove of the acquisition of certain items.
Amazon Spark: the app that claims its niche
For some time now, shopping by following certain posts on social media has been perfectly normal. On Facebook, communities of sellers and potential buyers come together in “Groups” to offer products and services, exchange information, express purchase intentions, and other regular activities of the buying and selling process. Online stores such as Amazon itself, eBay, or Mercado Libre, facilitate the action of automatically “sharing” their ads in the personal profiles of users of most web 2.0.
Many traditional businesses began to use Instagram or Pinterest to promote products, offers, and news and position their brands in the digital world. It is already an adopted and consolidated policy, by some community managers from various countries, to tag customers of stores, businesses, or companies on all social networks. The ultimate goal of these actions is to provoke the greatest number of interactions and generate engagement.
Even within Facebook, you can create virtual stores, with databases integrated and updated in real-time. The processes of marketing and selling the products are quite simple, as well as the navigation for the users. Furthermore, financially speaking, it is incomparably cheaper than opening and maintaining a physical store or setting up a sales website.
Amazon Spark is all this and much more. It has an interface halfway between the forms of visualization and navigation typical of Pinterest and the posting of photos and videos on Instagram. Users can tag friends or add “smiles” to posts, which serves as the equivalent of Facebook’s classic “Like.” But the most striking thing is the simplification of the purchase process: a click on the link that each product has, or directly on the images.
Stories on the Spark Wall
The configuration of the application is also quite simple and intuitive. Once installed, users must choose at least five topics of interest (and maybe more) to start following them. It is a very similar process to mobile content curation apps like Feedly.
From this selection, on the “Wall” of each active member, publications related to the indicated interests will be displayed, as well as suggestions of the type: “perhaps you might be interested in…”. The flow of information is defined by the Spark algorithm itself, also adding contributions or suggestions from user communities.
The products that generate the greatest number of interactions will be greatly favored. The application, like other social networks, generates “Stories”, managed through its own ranking of “most outstanding”. Users who buy the most or become “frequent customers” will be rewarded with “Enthusiasts” status. This factor will play in favor of the individual good reputation of each member of the community.
Preparing for global expansion
Amazon Spark is currently only available in the United States. In addition, some other conditions are taken into account: anyone who has installed the Amazon app on their mobile device can enter the social network. However, to be able to publish and sell within it, it is necessary to acquire the paid version of the company, an Amazon Prime membership as in the case of Prime Wardrobe.
Similarly, those who publish must pay a fee, the value of which has not yet been clarified by the company. So far no web or desktop version has been developed. There are also no official announcements of plans to take it beyond smartphones or tablets.
