“The fifth era of social commerce will have elements of collaboration, crowd sourcing, and also there will be a big shift to the influencers within a community, they will define more of the product and they will play a more integral role. There’s going to be other shifts too. In the most radical future PR agencies, interactive agencies, digital agencies could actually start representing the communities and go to the brand and say: ‘I’m representing my client, this community. Would you like to bid for their business?’”

Jeremiah Owyang, Web Strategist and Senior Analyst at Forrester Research