The Pinterest effect on e-commerce sites continues: online wine retailer Wine.com, a company with $67 million in annual revenue, is adding a social shopping component to its website which not only looks like Pinterest, but is also powered by Facebook. Wine.com says it’s using technology provided by Sociable Labs, a San Francisco-based startup which introduced its licensable “EverShare” product suite earlier this year.
But while Wine.com’s change is a notable one for them, the bigger story here is the traction that Sociable Labs is seeing, thanks to the “Pinterestification” (not a real word!) of e-commerce.
As a refresher, EverShare lets companies host their own Pinterest-style product pages on their websites, while also connecting with Facebook APIs to allow things like purchases, comments, and reviews to be shared with customers’ Facebook friends. It’s the kind of thing that could have been a Pinterest platform app, if Pinterest had a public API. But instead, the service gives sites the “Pinterest feel,” as well as the Facebook graph – an interesting and insanely practical combo.
On Wine.com’s site, for example, the implementation of Sociable’s technology allows visitors to visually browse through products, and, if they’re also connected to Facebook, they can instantly share their activity through Facebook’s Open Graph and see what their friends have recently purchased. There are also some handy customizations provided by Sociable Labs. For example, purchases with a gift message are never shared to Facebook so the surprise won’t be ruined. And there’s a box on the order confirmation page that lets customers post directly from checkout to Facebook.
But rollouts like this are risky. Wine.com didn’t do a big announcement, because the implementation is in beta. As I go to publish this, the EverShare-enabled Live Feed is down (the company says it’s doing “PCI compliance scans.” Oops.) Still, what do Wine.com’s customers think when a big part of the website is dead? Ideally, the best bet may be to make visual, social shopping a core part of the business, like Fab.com has, as opposed to a third-party integration. But not all merchants have the time or resources to make that happen. And maybe they’re not convinced that they should.
Sociable Labs’ CEO Nisan Gabbay says his company now has over 20 customers deployed or in process of deploying the EverShare feature set. And it’s not always e-commerce sites, as it turns out. “We’ve seen equally great response from prominent media companies, in addition to online retailers,” he notes. “As a result, we’ve doubled the size of our sales and services team over the last few months,” Gabbay says. However, because of agreements with customers, most don’t allow Sociable to publish specifics. The only others besides Wine.com which Gabbay could share are Charlotte Russe, Sole Society, Glyde, Rue La La, and Totsy.
The average monthly license fee for the EverShare software and accompanying analytics service is $6,000 per month, Gabbay tells us, and is determined by customer size. If visual browsing is the future of e-commerce and beyond, companies like his could be a big deal.

Should Retailers Go “Pinterest-Like” Or Pinterest Proper?

But retailers are going to soon have to make some tough decisions. Should they build visual, social shopping in-house, integrate directly with Pinterest and use third-party analytics offerings, or should they integrate a third-party Pinterest-like technology (like EverShare and its accompanying analytics reporting)? What’s the right answer?
EverShare, remember, launched in February, so it’s a very new product – those 20 some brands are definitely early adopters here.
Meanwhile, Pinterest itself is proving hugely influential in consumer online shopping behavior. According to new data from Compete, in a small survey, 31% of shoppers said that seeing a “pin” on Facebook influenced them to consider a brand and 25% said that seeing pins on Pinterest said it was used for discovery. Meanwhile, 8% on Pinterest and 5% on Facebook said the pin actually led to purchase.

But Compete points out that brands have been slow to engage on Pinterest, and wondered what the holdup may be. The lack of a proper API platform is likely a good guess. This stuff is difficult track. And, as with TV or magazine ads, it’s hard to know when exposure to imagery and content inspires a purchase further down the road…or even a “good feeling” about a brand. Measuring the true ROI of “pinning” behaviors, whether Pinterest proper or Pinterest-like (e.g. EverShare), is going to take some time. It’s the wild, wild west out there.

Workarounds For The Pinterest Problem

However, workarounds for the Pinterest problem are already starting to emerge. Curalate and Pintics offer analytics, for example. Lexity is introducing a new app tomorrow that lets merchants see how the products they carry are trending on Pinterest, and which are most popular. It’s also helping to discover the top influencers on the platform, as related to the products they sell. (Other apps have already emerged in the “pinfluence” space, like Pinclout and Pinpuff.) But Lexity’s offering lets retailers really start taking action on Pinterest – businesses and brands can download top pins, influencers, find and follow the right people and the right boards, pin their top products automatically, track revenue generated by pins and more.
However, the “right” strategy, like most things in this space, is not going to be a one-size fits all solution, though. For some, EverShare could be an easy way to boost social engagement, while others will want to engage more directly on Pinterest itself. And for others still, they may go for a mix of solutions. Whatever the result, “Pinterestification” of shopping, and maybe even discovery itself is coming.

Source : http://goo.gl/hTUIJ / techcrunch.com/

Mysterious bacteria near Easter Island statues offer cure for Alzheimers

• Easter Island
• Alzheimer's disease
• Sirolimus
• University of Texas at Austin
• Mouse

 Please don't
 forget to:

July 4, 2012 - A natural drug discovered in the soil of Easter Island could improve the memory of older men and women - and even treat Alzheimer's, researchers say.

In tests in mice, the drug halted the decline in brain function as they got older, and supplied hope that it could also treat depression.

The drug - rapamycin - is a bacterial by-product discovered in the shadows of the island's popular statues.

It is named after Rapa Nui, the Polynesian name for Easter Island, which sits isolated in the Pacific ocean - 2000 miles from anywhere.

Easter Island heads: It is named after Rapa Nui, the Polynesian name for Easter Island, which sits isolated in the Pacific ocean - 2000 miles from anyplace

It is already utilized in transplant patients to avoid organ rejection and now scientists in journal Neuroscience say it can increase understanding and assist treat cognitive decline.

It could even treat situations like Alzheimer's, they believe.

A team from the University of Texas added the drug to the diet of healthy mice and discovered it enhanced learning and memory in young mice and memory in elder rodents.

Professor Veronica Galvan said: ‘We made the young ones discover, and bear in mind what they learned, far better than what is standard.

‘Among the older mice, the ones fed with a diet plan like rapamycin really showed an improvement, negating the normal decline that you see in these functions with age.’

The team also identified three ‘happy, feel-good’ neurotransmitters - serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine - had been higher in the mice treated with rapamycin.

This could help clarify the effects on memory, she said, and helped back up earlier research which showed Alzheimer's like syndromes had been lowered in mice treated with the drug.

‘This is super-intriguing and one thing we are going to pursue in the lab,’ she stated.

It also lowered anxiety and depressive-like behaviour in the mice, she said.

Her colleague Dr Jonathan Halloran utilized a series of elevated tunnels that led to a catwalk to examine the behaviour of the rodents.

Mice prefer tunnels to open spaces and had been watched on the catwalk.

Dr Halloran mentioned: ‘All of a sudden the mice are in open space.

‘It's pretty far from the floor for their size, sort of like if a particular person is hiking and suddenly the trail gets steep. It really is pretty far down and not so comfortable.’Mice with much less anxiety were a lot more curious to discover the catwalk, he stated.

He explained: ‘We observed that the mice fed with a diet containing rapamycin spent significantly a lot more time out in the open arms of the catwalk than the animals fed with a regular diet plan.’

Similarly, when mice had been handled by their tails they would struggle, but depressed mice would struggle less.

‘So we can measure how considerably and how typically they struggle as a measure of the motivation they have to get out of an uncomfortable circumstance,’ said Dr Galvan.

‘We discovered rapamycin acts like an antidepressant - it increases the time the mice are attempting to get out of the scenario. ‘They don't give up they struggle far more.

Sources and more information:
• Mysterious bacteria found in soil near Easter Island statues could offer cure for Alzheimers

A natural drug discovered in the soil of Easter Island could improve the memory of older people - and even treat Alzheimer's, researchers say. In tests in mice, the drug halted the decline in brain function as they got older, and offered hope that it could also treat depression. The drug - rapamycin - is a bacterial by-product discovered in the...

• Does Easter Island hold the secret of reversing Alzheimer's Disease? [Neuroscience]

The drug rapamycin comes from bacteria found in the soils of Easter Island. It's helped save lives for over a decade by preventing rejection in organ transplants, but that might just be scratching the surface of what it can do. Rapamycin takes its name from Rapa Nui, the island's name in the native Eastern Polynesian language.

• Does Easter Island Hold Alzheimer's Cure?
• Easter Island may hold the key to curing Alzheimer's
• Rapamycin Raises Cognition Throughout Life Span In Mouse Model
• Does Easter Island Hold Keys to Solving Alzheimer? 

Source : http://www.disclose.tv/news/Mysterious_bacteria_near_Easter_Island_statues_offer_cure_for_Alzheimers/85496