Flipkart Will Now Let You ‘Ping’ Your Friends While Shopping Online

Flipkart has announced a social networking service called ‘Ping’ today. It is a part of the Flipkart app and is an initiative by the company to bring a social element to your e-commerce shopping experience.

How does it work? Ping essentially allows you to talk to your friends and family when you are shopping for a particular product. So now, the store experience will come alive, whether you’re buying a gift for your mother on her birthday and you need your dad’s opinion or if you’re simply contemplating on buying shoes that you’ve been eyeballing for a while.

Ping allows you to share photos, wish lists and the products in your cart so that you can show them off to your loved ones and get an opinion. It automatically adds your friends through your smartphones Phonebook too. All you have to do is send them a text inviting them to Ping and if they don’t already have the feature, they will be asked to install it. 

Flipkart’s Chief Product Officer Punit Soni stated that Ping’s design was original but the deign and UI look pretty similar to Facebook messenger. This app has been optimised to suit India and the network problems our country faces. Hence, Ping is 2MB in size, consuming less data, battery and is compatible with any smartphone running on Android 2.1 and above.

For now though, Ping is available only between you and your friends. However, the chat will soon become available to sellers, customer service and stakeholders in the e-commerce chain. You’ll be able to chat with anyone you like then.

Right now Ping has been launched with an invite model which means that only those who have an invite will be able to use the service and will also be able to share 10 invites with their friends.

Whatever said and done, this feature seems to be a well thought out and a convenient one.