It’s looking like Amazon has acquired Quorus (not to be confused with Q&A site Quora). Quorus was responsible for social shopping software, so it’s not too hard to see where such an acquisition would fit into Amazon’s plan.
On Twitter, Quorus descibed itself as follows:
We are a social commerce software company in Seattle focused on delivering compelling social shopping and marketing solutions for retailers and brands.
While no official announcements have been made, GeekWire is reporting that Quorus co-founder Logan Bowers left to become a software engineer at Amazon a few weeks ago, and that other members of the Quorus team (including co-founder and CEO Michael Dougherty) have also joined in “what appears to be a ‘talent acquisition’.”
Currently, all you get when you go to Quorus.com is a placeholder site from directNIC:
When it was live, Quorus offered a toolbar that you could use on a site like Zappos to easily connect with your friends via social networks and email. Lauren Dugan at SocialTimes walks readers through a demo/interview with Dougherty in this piece from last year. The product allowed users to live chat from the toolbar.
Is this the kind of functionality we’re going to see coming to Amazon?
It’s still unclear whether Amazon is even interested in the software itself. Again, no official announcements, and they’re not talking about the details.