PowerReviews Launches New Facebook Offerings, Driving Social Commerce and Product Discovery on the Consumer's Community of Choice

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - Sep 9, 2011) - PowerReviews today announced the launch of two Facebook products that bring the power of its social commerce network -- which includes more than 23 million product reviews -- to the consumer's community of choice. Both products allow brands and retailers to leverage Facebook as a platform for driving sales by making the process of online shopping and product discovery more social.

Facebook Discovery allows customers to have conversations from particular products, categories and reviewers pushed directly to their newsfeed, creating an opportunity for viral marketing. Facebook Community gives brands and retailers a way to foster community among their customers, both on the product page and their Facebook fan pages. It also offers a platform to create and reward brand ambassadors, while encouraging the sharing of product feedback and advice among customers. Once activated by a brand or retailer, features of both products are available to Facebook's 750 million users as an effortless opt-in.

"This is true social commerce -- facilitating the flow of information among consumers based on shared interests and attributes," said PowerReviews CEO Pehr Luedtke. "There is a growing body of evidence pointing to Facebook's value as a platform for commerce and a source of substantial traffic for retailers. With this launch, we're building on our core expertise in ratings and reviews and allowing brands and retailers to tap into the serendipity of the Facebook experience in order to drive better, more authentic product discovery."

Facebook Discovery includes the following features:

• Follow a Reviewer: Consumers can choose to follow a reviewer, having future reviews published to their Facebook newsfeed.
• Follow a Product: Consumers can follow a product of interest by having future reviews for that product published to their Facebook newsfeed.
• Follow a Category: Consumers opt in to hear about new and trending products in a particular category via a daily product review published to their Facebook newsfeed.
• Ask friends for advice: Consumers can ask their friends which product to buy by posting a question or poll to their Facebook wall.

Facebook Community includes the following features:

• Facebook Profiles: Consumers can link their Facebook profile to their reviews creating a rich onsite profile. This increases the credibility of their reviews for other shoppers.
• Automated Badging: Allows brands and retailers to automatically reward their best reviewers with custom badges based on the company's own criteria such as total number of reviews, helpful votes or duration as a customer.
• Leaderboard: Recognizes the Top 100 reviewers for a brand or retailer and allows shoppers considering a purchase to identify and ask questions of those reviewers, and opt in to follow their future reviews.
• Ask a Reviewer: Enables consumers to engage with reviewers by asking product-related questions.

"Our customers are incredibly engaged -- they always want to share their opinions and notify others when they've gotten a good deal or quality product," said Brian Lebersfeld, Vice President of E-Commerce Operations for Capitol Lighting. "With PowerReviews' new Facebook offerings, we're adding on another layer of community and personalization that will go beyond our customers' circle of friends to include people with similar needs and interests."

"Our customers have told us again and again how valuable product reviews are when they're shopping for something on our site, and these new features allow us to push the most relevant insights directly to them," said Billy Amicarelle, Director of Sales for Nutrex Research. "In doing so, we're able to bring some of the chance product discovery that happens in a brick-and-mortar store to the online experience."

To learn more about Facebook Discovery and Community, please visit http://pwrrv.ws/ofncR9.

About PowerReviews
PowerReviews is the world's largest social commerce network. It helps companies tap into consumer conversations to drive better business, while providing consumers an easy way to share their insights about brands, products and services. Leading brands have standardized on PowerReviews to drive sales, increase traffic and shape product development.