(with inputs from Salman SH) Flipkart will shut down its Ping chat feature starting June 25th, 2016, and shut its image search as well, the company told to MediaNama.While shutting the image search, which allowed users to take photographs of clothing and search for similar items of Flipkart, is odd, Ping was dead on arrival anyway. At the launch, Punit Soni, Flipkart's now former Chief Product Officer talked about a social graph for Flipkart, and wanted these discussions to take place within Flipkart's own application, instead of allowing discussions to happen anywhere, on any platform. Flipkart was trying to compete with social networks, and to some extent, shift users from what was their natural behavior, by building a network of Flipkart shoppers connected to each other. Network effects are in place, user behavior is defined, and it is going to take a significantly focused and great communication product, with a new way of doing things, to get people to adapt to a new platform. If you want to share an T-shirt you like, you will want to share it on a platform where your friend already is, and is already active. In its app, Flipkart effectively de-emphasised sharing on other platforms, and emphasised Ping. How many people check the Flipkart application every day, or multiple times a day? Users who sent a "Ping" to a friend who didn't have the Flipkart app, forced them to download the application to check or respond to the message. The floating blue chat blob in the app didn't exactly improve user…
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