When we wrote about what 2012 may hold for the world's largest online retailer, Amazon, we mentioned the idea that Jeff Bezos and Co. may eventually pull together the site's myriad digital services and leverage its growing Kindle platform into some kind of social network. Now it appears the company may be doing just that.
Geekwire reports that Amazon has effectively hired the entire team at Quorus. Amazon previously hired Quorus co-founder Logan Bowers, and now it appears he's taking his team with him.
Quorus' former vice president of business development, Matt Scoble, confirmed to Mashable that the company's other co-founder, Michael Dougherty, now works for Amazon. The report says Amazon also snapped up Quorus employees Sam Rayachoti and Peter Abramson. Quorus.com now shows a placeholder site and the company's official Twitter feed hasn't been active since July.
Hold your horses before you think Amazon's grab at social-software talent means the company is prepping to take on Facebook. Quorus makes software that lets shoppers essentially bounce purchases off friends before committing to a buy. It's not quite the next Google+, but it could give Amazon an edge over other online retailers.
Quorus software works like this. Say you're buying a sweater for your dad, but you can't decide between two different patterns. Right from the product page, Quorus lets you call up a window to contact your mom, siblings and friends to help you out. The connection can be done by email, Facebook, Twitter or even text message.
Once you've reached out to your impromptu jury, Quorus can facilitate both a live chat and offline discussion. Not everyone will be able to stop what they're doing to help you hunt down the perfect wool cardigan, so the software saves those messages for you (and yours) to read later. The whole exchange is hosted by Quorus -- it's not dependent on the social networks it uses to communicate.
That's probably why the service looks attractive to Amazon. While Amazon has an interest in playing nice with the likes of Facebook, there's no way Amazon will trust its destiny with a third party. Rather then create a social shopping experience from the ground up, Amazon simply gobbled up Quorus.
The next logical step is for Amazon to deploy Quorus' collaborative shopping system on its product pages. The question now is whether it will appear universally throughout the site or if it will be something lumped in with the premium services of Amazon Prime. By going site-wide, Amazon will have even more of an edge over other retailers. However, the company needs to convert more customers into Prime members to help push its platform and right now there just aren't a lot of good reasons for Amazon users to opt for the service.
What do you think about the Quorus experience, and does it work for Amazon? Would you use it if it was available? And more important, would you pay for it? Let us know in the comments.
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