There is now no doubt that Social Commerce is the way of the future, and there is a lot of movement going on from large industry players to develop new products that add value to the new social commerce revolution. At the recent SugarCon this past Monday, SugarCRM announced its purchase of iExtensions. This technology allows SugarCRM’s users access to many social business possibilities including more advanced tracking and analytics of customers and product fans that come from and are active on social commerce. IBM has also taken more interest in social commerce. IBM stated that they predict social commerce to be a $100 billion plus industry!!! They state the reason is because the core of the way people interact and exchange data is changing. Now a days people are less prone to call you about a product they like, they’d prefer to just send you a notification on Facebook. Information and conversations that used to be private (because they are boring to others) are now exchanged in a public platform.

IBM’s new product Coremetrics Social also allows you to analyze social media metrics. IBM calls the idea that is pushing their new product development “smarter commerce.” The idea is that customers’ needs and demands are quickly evolving in the digital world, so you should develop software that keeps up with the trends.

Salesforce.com has also joined the social commerce movement in its acquisition of Radian6. Radian6’s technology will help Salesforce uses track, monitor, and analyze the thousands of conversations constantly going on across various social media platforms.

The time has come to realize that social commerce is not just a craze, but a fundamental shift in the ecommerce industry and the way people prefer to shop and share information online.