“Social” has become a bit of a buzz word over recent times. Social networking. Social media. Social bookmarking. Social marketing. Social responsibility. And the latest that I’ve heard – Social shipping.
Social shipping is a term I first came across on the Smashing Magazine website on the post about their upcoming book. Here’s how they put it:
We want to make the book affordable to everyone and therefore are subsidizing shipment of the book worldwide. However, shipping costs are extremely high to some parts of the world. Please help us minimize these shipping costs for folks who are worse off by voluntarily paying more for the shipping of your copy. This is what we call “social shipping.”
Cool idea, huh? What do you think?
I found it interesting as well. Kind of on the fence about it. Are we just putting money into the publisher’s pocket or are there really people out there that want this book and can’t get it? Seems to me like anyone who would be into Smashing Magazine would also have access to the book, but I could be wrong. I actually wrote a post about it on my blog. Feel free to chime in…
You do raise an interesting point – I hadn’t thought about them just pocketing the money. I don’t think they would but now that the question has been put out there, I also wonder if they have some sort of accounting that shows the amount of “social shipping” that has been donated, and who it’s been doled out to.