Flipkart launched a new service today dubbed Ping, which is more of a social shopping experience built into the Flipkart app itself. With Ping you can chat with your friends, discuss, share product links and images to decide on what you are buying, akin to regular offline shopping.
Ping is currently available only through invites, and the feature is available with the new updated apps on Android and iOS. The Ping messaging interface is similar to Facebook Messenger with its Chat Heads. To send an image or link to your "Group" you simply need to long tap on a product and then flick it to any of the chat heads, after that you can carry on a conversation there.
At present Flipkart Ping leverages your phonebook contacts to find the friends that are using the service or you have invited. There is no integration with Facebook, WhatsApp or any other social network. It is a completely integrated experience within itself. Users who already have the feature can send invites through SMS.
Flipkart says that they have worked on the network stack of the app and protocols it uses to reduce data traffic which would allow it to work with even 2G networks in India. The entire experience has been created from the ground-up by Flipkart's own in-house engineering team in India, something we should be really proud about.
Flipkart’s Chief Product Officer, Punit Soni said that online shopping was becoming an isolated affair and therefore such a social engagement was necessary:
Shopping is primarily a social activity and going for it with friends and family has been the norm since time immemorial. Online shopping, on the other hand, has largely remained a solo experience. ‘Ping’ aims to transform online shopping by allowing users to talk to each other real time in order to make decisions and decide on what to buy!
The company also demoed its image searching capabilities built within the updated Flipkart app and it worked like a charm. Its good to see a home-gown company working tirelessly towards the now frontier, mobile. But the reports that Flipkart may abandon its desktop experience completely seems a bit far off even though mobile adoption is set to expand enormously in India.
