Social Commerce: If You Can't Beat Them, Buy Them

So Twitter is all of a Tweet today over rumors that the Big G (Google) is to buy Little G (Groupon).  Apparently, according to the WSJ, multiple sources close to the situation confirm that Google is in discussions to buy Groupon.  If it happens, a very large cheque will be written, Yahoo has already been turned down with a $2bn+ cheque in hand.

With the launch this week of Google’s groovy and most un-Google-like social commerce platform, Boutiques.com, allowing people to curate their own online designer stores, the purchase of Groupon would establish Google as a leader in the field. And for Andrew Mason, Groupon CEO who has taken the social commerce platform from WordPress blog to $1bn+ in under two years, it could be a smart exit strategy, before Facebook Deals gatecrashes the party.

And actress Demi Moore has bought a chunk of Fashism – the hip social shopping app that gives you instant peer feedback from the fitting room (or bedroom…) on what suits you.  Along with husband Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and other investors are putting $1m into the social commerce start up. Social Commerce comes to Hollywood.

And then there’s LivingSocial, the prettier of the two big group-buy social commerce platforms, that has just bought a controlling stake Australian group-buy platform JumpOnIt for $5m.

Consolidation will be the name of the social commerce game in 2011.

So social commerce platforms, download Fashism today, and pretty yourself up for suitors.