GumGum

So once again, I was on the search for web 2.0 related articles, and while I was on the hunt, I stumbled upon an article entitled "GumGum Wants To Turn Celebrity Pics Into Shopping Sprees With ShopThisLook". The title seemed interesting and so I continue to read on. The article talks about a recent upgrade offered by the company where they take high quality images of celebrities/famous individuals and on the side...using shop this look, provides information on where one can purchase clothing times similar to what the celebrity has on. The example they gave was of Lindsey Lohan, wearing jeans, a shirt, jacket, and a purse. On the side of the picture, they have the listing of the individual items and price. Pretty sweet! Now, we girls no longer have to do our own research, its pretty much done for us. Since the company had an interesting concept, I looked them up and discovered that Gum Gum is "an analytics and monetization platform for content online". What exactly does that mean? Well...basically, they make content available to publishers, large or small for a fee of course or in exchange of advertising. They have two distinct pricing schemes. One where the publisher pays per use. For example, if Gum Gum provides an image, they will be able to monitor how many people viewed or clicked on the image. (Gum Gum does provide useful info like # of views, percentage of female viewers, age range, visits, etc. )This then will equate to the dollar amount the publisher has to pay for the image. The other method of payment is to go with ad supported images that subsidize the cost of images. Seems like a lot of companies probably use the second route since it FREE. How does this work? Developers simply download Gum Gum code into their own company code. Not that complicated really. An interesting comment made by a reader was how is this really going to work when only a fraction of shoppers can afford the same clothing/fashion wear that celebs have? This is a very valid point...but I would think that a company like Gum Gum would have thought this piece out and probably tried to offer low-cost alternatives maybe for people who want the same look but can afford the same prices. Whatever the deal, this seems like a pretty good concept…will be interesting to see where this goes in the future. This is something worth looking into....