Affino: the Social Commerce Hub

When we started developing Affino the concept was very much focused on having all the social and commercial components available within Affino so that everything required to run market-leading social commerce sites can be done on one single unified site.

As the web has evolved it’s become essential to integrate Affino into the larger web ecosystem. In the process Affino has evolved into a social commerce hub where content is produced and distributed around the key social media and commercial sites, and where Affino is able to consume and aggregate content, products, media and social updates from the web at large.

With every release Affino is becoming increasingly integrated into the web so that what is created on the core website permeates the web at large to create seamless commercial channels between Affino sites and the key gateways on the web.

Below we’ve broken down the key ways in which Affino automatically integrates with the web at large.

Content

The core of Affino’s content integration revolves around incoming and outgoing feeds. These can be both RSS or Atom feeds and Affino doesn’t just take in straight content feeds, it filters and transforms the content to provide the best-fit for purpose content.

Affino also seamlessly integrates with Google Maps for embedded maps.

Google Maps

 RSS / Atom

•  Incoming
•  Outgoing

Content Delivery Networks

• CD Networks
• Limelight

Media

Affino’s main integration is with the video providers and most of the key social video platforms are supported and fully integrated into the Affino media library. Affino also integrates with Amazon for product (music) artwork, SlideShare for presentations and with iTunes for presenting Podcasts.

 Podcasts

•  iTunes

 Product Images

•  Amazon

 Videos

•  DailyMotion
•  MetaCafe
•  Vimeo
•  YouTube

 Presentations

•  SlideShare

Store

The main thrust of Affino’s integration has traditionally been with Payment Gateways and a number are supported and the integration is being continually extended. With the launch of the Affino eCommerce Webservice API, things have moved on dramatically this year allowing Affino to easily integrate with ERP, accountancy, inventory and product catalogue systems.

Over the coming weeks we’ll also be integrating Affino directly into key ecommerce leaders during the coming weeks for seamless product distribution.

 eCommerce Webservice API

 Payment Gateways

•  Authorize.net
•  CMP
•  NetBanx
•  Ogone
•  PayPal
•  SagePay
•  Secure Trading
•  WorldPay

 Products

•  Google Base / Products *
•  Amazon *
•  eBay *

Promotion

The very nature of promotion means that Affino closely integrates with 3rd parties for social bookmarkers and ad serving. Affino also provides extensive newsletter and other email updates which are compatible with all the leading email clients. Other aspects such as RSS feeds and Social Integration act as key promotion tools.

 Social Bookmarkers

•  Digg
•  Delicious
•  Reddit
•  StumbleUpon
•  + any other 3rd party

 Ad Servers

•  Any 3rd party via embedded scripts

 Newsletters

 Content Subscriptions

Community

Affino does two way synchronisation with  the leading social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook. Currently Affino is being developed to seamlessly integrate with LinkedIn as well.

 Social Media

•  Facebook
•  Twitter
•  LinkedIn *

Analysis

The biggest integration projects being undertaken right now are being done between Affino and the Google Trifecta. The nature of many of the developments though is that they will greatly improve Affino’s integration with other 3rd party analytics tools. Since Google is the market leader we’ve focused on integrating with it’s key analytics products as a priority.

 Google Analytics

•  Google Analytics
•  Google Webmaster Tools
•  Google Website Optimizer *

* under development