Here's where the social, local, mobile web is taking e-commerce (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – May 11, 2012)

Kind of a mixed bag this week, though I guess I’ll lump these under the heading of “it’s all e-commerce.” As mobile, social, and local continue to merge towards a common, continual experience, the boundaries between search and social, mobile and merchandising blur further and further. If it please the court, here’s this week’s evidence:

• Mashable covers Bing’s redesign, which claims to reinvents social search and discovery. And what Bing’s doing is pretty cool. I’m just not sure “reinvents” is the right word yet. Neither is Danny Sullivan who puts Bing’s social search vs. Google’s Search Plus Your World head-to-head
• Speaking of social, Forbes examines 5 steps CMOs can take to make social media work. As you might imagine, having a social marketing plan is a huge help. As you move forward on your plan, you might want to check out our tips on avoiding common marketing plan mistakes.
• As Facebook gets ready for its IPO, we’re getting a broader look behind the curtain. And some interesting contradictions are emerging. For instance, AT&T recently stated that Facebook is ‘major force’ to its mobile business, underscoring how much mobile and social are joined at the hip. Unfortunately, what’s good for AT&T isn’t necessarily good for Facebook. The company admits in its recent filings that it doesn’t know how mobile works. As mobile traffic growth to the social site outpaces desktop traffic growth, this could be a big problem for Facebook in the coming months and years.
• Demonstrating where the money is in mobile and commerce, as well as highlighting my point that it’s all e-commerce, eMarketer offers compelling data about how luxury brand apps can open the m-commerce door.
• And finally, this growth in m-commerce underscores the fact that overall e-commerce continues to grow, demonstrating double-digit growth even in a down economy. Which is why it’s worth paying attention to what the highest converting websites do differently and seeing how you can apply those lessons to your own site.

Social and mobile and local continue to embed themselves more deeply in consumers’ everyday lives. We no longer live in a world where people “go online.” They are online, all the time, every day. We carry the Internet in our pockets (and, soon, in our eyeglasses).

At this point, it should be clear, all commerce is e-commerce.

The defense rests (but only for the weekend — I’ll be back here bright and early Monday morning and I hope you will, too).

Oh, and if you’ll pardon the shameless plug, I’m teaching three classes (along with Mike Moran and Rob Petersen) in Rutgers University’s Search Marketing and Analytics Mini-MBA, June 11-June 15. If you’re interested, enroll here.

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