User:Niazza/Pikaba.com

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Pikaba.com is a US Social Shopping platform owned and maintained by Pikaba Com. Inc. Pikaba's logo is "All you have to do is ask". Pikaba is designed as an online community for Consumers and Merchants/Service Providers. Launched in June 2008 Pikaba.com received Open Web Award as the Best Social Shopping site of 2008.

History
Pikaba.com was founded in 2008 by former Microsoft Principal Program Manager and Director of SQL Server product group Dmitriy Balin and Irena Balin, former Microsoft Development Manager in SQL Server product group. Since their social shopping product was first launched at Internet Retailer Conference in Chicago in 2008, Pikaba has been continuously developing its features and functionality. In 2008 Pikaba was recognized the Best Social shopping site by Mashable.com. By the end of 2009 Pikaba community had reached over 25 000 users and is constantly growing.

Product
Pikaba.com is a social shopping platform that connects Consumers and Merchants/Service Providers in one community. At the center of the marketplace – consumer shopping requests that trigger merchants to give quotes or bids. In addition to a powerful request engine the marketplace has multiple social networking features deeply embedded into the site. That is an interesting combination of leads generation platform and trading marketplace. This platform is totally open. All requests and quotes are open.

Consumer and Merchants Opportunities
In accordance with its logo, Pikaba shopping process is based at the Consumer's request. A Consumer can use Pikaba.com as a regular internet marketplace and search for a specific product or service offered by Merchants/Service Providers registered at Pikaba.com.

At the same time Consumer can place its unique 'Request to Buy' and get all the advantages of a reverse auction deal. The promise is that if more merchants bid for consumer requests, the better the price will be for a consumer. The merchants’ benefit is that they get direct access to leads in real time. Because of that they can provide better pricing.

Reverse Auction
In a reverse Auction Consumers and Sellers switch places comparing to a usual auction. At Pikaba.com the Reverse Auction is one of the basic business activities. There are four main steps there to:

1.   Personalized "Requests to Buy" creation

2.   Request matching with products and services available

3.   Price quotes submission by the merchants and service providers

4.   Consumer chooses the best offer and completes the deal

Personalized Request to Buy
Following an easy-to-perform free registration each user can place a request to buy at Pikaba.com. For every request the visitor specifies a request category, request type and desired price range.

Request Categories can be chosen from a comprehensive drop-down list. The list includes commonly used categories such as antiques, art, business, computer, gifts etc. placed in the alphabetical order. "Everything else" category is also available at the end of the list for all the requests that do not fit any of the categories provided.

Request Type is one of five request types available as follows: Want to Buy, For Trade, Want for Free, Will Rent and Need Service

Want to Buy is the most commonly used request type

Want for Free request type is intended for visitors looking for charity help and sponsorship, e.g. "a single mother of 4 children needs a van"

Desired Price can be entered by the Consumer as an exact volume of a range of prices acceptable.

Request Matching
Pikaba shopping engine automatically checks all the available product and service listings and send relevant Consumer's requests to the Merchants and Service Providers.

Price Quotes
Merchants and Service providers consider the request and submit their price quotes within the desired range. Quotes are placed in an open manner and make a reverse auction, where the Consumer can choose the best offer.

Social Networking opportunities
One of the key advantages of social shopping is opportunity to consult other community memebers, view their deals and references and choose the best shopping decisions possible.

All the Pikaba members can participate in each others' shopping processes (e.g. recommend 'where to by' and 'what to select'), comment on the decision, provide positive or negative reference on a specific Seller and/or Consumer (e.g. warn others about a fraud).

A set of functionalities designed to provide all kinds of shopping discussion in Pikaba Community. Along with the chats these are: social sellers polls, blogs, advisors and compatibility with other social networks

Polls
Any Pikaba member can create a Pikaba Poll as a separate topic in the Pikaba community. All the other Pikaba visitors will then be able to enter the poll and participate in the discussion. Having considered the answers to the poll question given by hundreds of other Pikaba members, one can make a sound, well-informed purchase decision.

Blogs
Any Pikaba member can start a personal blog to share his\her shopping experience with the rest. Other Pikaba members can comment and vote on the Blogs as well as search for the blog topics they are interested in.

Advisors
Any user, who possess an expertise knowledge in some area, can become and advisor and help other users with their shopping decisions. Advisor’s recommendations are voted by the users which affects advisor’s rating. Advisor’s rating is open to everyone, so everyone can see a particular user’s worth as voted by the community.

Networking
Pikaba.com is compatible with hi5, MySpace, Facebook, Orkut and Friendster networks to provide its users with ability to share requests, polls and events with their friends. Pikaba also enables user to check friends’ polls and blogs; and to make widgets out of his/her request and post them on other social networking sites and dedicated application is developed that lets create request for Pikaba.com directly from a Facebook account.

Group Buy
Using Pikaba, users can group their requests and demands for specific service or product and form a relevant group request. Merchants can then create special offers in order to target the groups especially. The group can also be created following a special discount offer from the merchant.

Geo Location Relevance
Pikaba’s platform is built around geo location services. Each user has to mention his geographic area and can update it when she creates a request. These requests will be matched only with the merchants in their area. Today Pikaba.com serves over three thousand different Merchants and Service Providers all over the country. The geo-location service is critical in order to filter out geographically inefficient deals (e.g. user from New York offered cleaning services in Texas).

Local Search feature is very interesting by its promise to show the product/service search results in a user’s local vicinity.

Additional Opportunities
Pikaba.com is constantly developing. One of the latest developments is application to place Pikaba requests from the member's iPhone.

Another important feature announced by the Pikaba.com Inc. is customization capability of the platform. The platform can be used to launch a new marketplace in for any vertical with its unique design and branding.

Public Opinion
During relatively short term of existence Pikaba.com has proved itself to be an efficient tool to sell and buy. Pikaba.com enables consumers to make sure they get exactly what they want from a trusted source at the lowest price possible. At the same time Merchants and Service Providers get chance to sell more by getting additional channel to promote their products and services; reduce their cost of sales by easily getting very high quality leads and get faster inventory turnout by selling in bulk to groups of consumers.

This is confirmed by a continuously growing number of users, as well as Mashable 2008 award and a number of positive reviews from other consumer-oriented websites as the on one the Keillerstartups "Pikaba is joining the empowered consumer bandwagon. It does a good job of offering users an alternative way to shop. The interface is clean and easy to use. By using the site you’ll be able to get the best prices, save time, and get advice."