Influenster Relaunches With New Product Discovery & Social Influence Platform

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - September 03, 2014) - Influenster, the leading online community of educated social media-minded consumers and influential trendsetters, today unveiled its redesigned site at Influenster.com. Designed as a clean, elegant online community, it is also the powerful backbone of its product discovery platform, which also features:

• The Hub -- an innovative crowd-sourced and curated content platform where members create or curate original content, lists, how-to videos, polls and quizzes.
• Reviews -- a new section of the site where more than 500,000 new products are added for review by members including member Q&A's, reviews, product rankings and price comparisons.
• VoxPerks -- now members have a chance to earn exclusive offers from brands based on their social media influence. These perks help them to discover new products and services with heavy discounts.

"Influence and Word of mouth (WOM) has been generally recognized as one of the most effective drivers for product discovery and ultimately purchase," said Aydin Acar, Co-Founder and CEO, Influenster. "With online word of mouth growing so rapidly through social media it has become critical for marketers and consumers alike to have a solid model to guide them strategically and qualitatively in their product discovery and purchase decision making process. With the site, we are hoping to help consumers discover new products, answer consumer questions, convey choice, and know which social media efforts are really having an impact on both the brand and the consumer."

With its bold design and intuitive interface, Influenster makes it easier to discover new and existing products with options to sort by relevance, grade (A to F), reviews, and ranking.

And because every Influenster has an earned score based on their expertise, the weight of their influence is factored into the significance of their review, increasing transparency and trust.

But more importantly, by making product discovery not only easy and effective, but also fun, Influenster has already seen a 300% increase in consumer generated reviews since introducing the new product discovery platform. The company's current membership base includes over 850,000 users. This number is doubling in size every three quarters.

Recent research has validated what Influenster has known all along: Purchase behaviors, especially among millennials, are directly linked to consumer reviews and word of mouth marketing. In fact, according to Millennial Central, 68% of millennials are completely unfazed by celebrity endorsements or star-studded ads, while 93% usually read reviews prior to purchase. 

From beauty to banks, candy to Converse, health to Hollywood, Influenster provides plenty of useful social content: lists, quizzes, polls, and articles published and written by a self-identifying community of social media mavens.

Visitors to Influenster can search, discover and discuss over 1MM products from more than 40k leading consumer brands, complemented by 2.6MM first-hand reviews and counting across food and beverage, health and beauty, retailers and services, and even fashion and entertainment categories creating an organic and ongoing conversation, allowing users to not only discover new products or services, but also hone in on what's most relevant to them.

About Influenster
Influenster is a community of trendsetters, social media hotshots, and educated consumers who live to give opinions of products and experiences. Brands such as as Victoria's Secret, Mondelez, Sony, L'Oreal, Coca Cola, P&G and Unilever among many others have partnered with Influenster to introduce and expose their products to this community. Influenster was founded in 2010 by Elizabeth Scherle and Aydin Acar. For more information visit: www.influenster.com.