BBM Channels has been out for quite some time now and BlackBerry wants to monopolize it. So how well and how much has this boiled down to? Well BlackBerry has released some tibits for us yesterday, so let us take a look at this!
Song of the Week is a new iTunes channel available in Canada, Indonesia, the UK, and the US where you can discover, listen to, and buy music. And two retailers, Amazon and Qoo10, have launched “deals” channels that each offer steep discounts on selected merchandise.
Social commerce is simply giving people the ability to purchase products through social media, along with the ability to share information and reviews about products they’ve bought. It’s adding a sales channel to what has already become a powerful word-of-mouth media channel.
Every Tuesday, we post a new song in our Song of the Week channels. The channels are available to people on BlackBerry, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone operating systems in Canada (C0043D0A0), Indonesia (C004B244B), the UK (C0042E650), and the US (C003BE124). Everyone can click through to see the song, album, and artist at the iTunes store. Those on iOS will also be able to purchase through the iTunes store on their device.
Through Amazon’s country-specific Deals channels for Canada (C00210535), the US (C0028F4B5), and UK (C0016F386), consumers can click all the way through to complete a purchase.
In Asia, Qoo10 was also part of the statistics as well, but only focused on Indonesia and Malaysia, and there is not any mention of Singapore.
Qoo10 is one of the fastest-growing online marketplaces in the world, poised to challenge Amazon and eBay to be #1 in Asia. The company is taking a similar approach with its channels for Indonesia (C001CFCB0) and Malaysia (C00280617). Each one offers special deals on deeply discounted products every few hours instead of just once a day.
Recently, Qoo10 worked closely with our BBM advertising team to promote its channel to Indonesian BBM users through ad placements that included sponsored posts, sponsored invites, and featured tiles. After a 10-week campaign, Qoo10 saw a 26X increase in its subscriber base.
Expect to see more of this activity in BBM Channels in the coming months. We’re approaching social commerce in the same way we’ve set up the BBM Shop, which works through users’ accounts on BlackBerry World, iTunes, Google Play, or Windows Phone Store. We’re not looking to set up a separate account, but rather to let you use the ones you already have and trust.
