Shopping Social Networks

One of the most overlooked segments of the social networking market is the shopping search engines. This is somewhat ironic because Amazon and eBay pioneered a lot of the concepts that are commonplace today in social networks.

At Amazon for example look beyond the items for sale and look at the personalization and community aspects of search that are interwoven into the web sites. Not sure what to buy? Then how about some recommendations based upon your previous purchases or from people with similar likes as you? Or how about product reviews written by members of the community or feedbacks on sellers to help you can decide on who to buy from? These features are all integral parts of the user experience at Amazon and have helped Amazon become one the top destinations on the net.

While Amazon and eBay get most of the coverage in the shopping social network space they are not the only companies in this space. Two other interesting shopping search engines are Stylehive.com and MyPicklist.com.

What is StyleHive?

Stylehive bills itself as a collaborative shopping community. It is a place where contributors can work together to share and discover the hottest stores, designers, trends, and must have products.

In their words:

The Stylehive is a collection of all the best products, brands, designers and stores discovered and tagged by the Hive community.

The Stylehive is the unique product and vision of entrepreneur and CEO Michael Carrier. Michael has enlisted a talented team of technology and online shopping experts who are passionate about making it easier to find the most interesting products, brands, and designers on the web, while providing a simple way to save and share these finds with others.

Based in San Francisco, the Stylehive brings together the distinct worlds of technology and trendsetting fashion, shopping and online retail.

Similar to other Web 2.0 sites, users can tag items that interest them and this list can be shared with others. The most popular tags show an eclectic array of items that defiantly learn towards the under 30 crowd (or Bubble Generation).

What is MyPicklist.com?

MyPicklist.com is an interesting mix of social search engine and large affiliate site.

In their words:

MyPickList.com helps consumers make informed purchase decisions. In English terms - MyPickList.com drives word-of-mouth commerce “which retailers love”. MyPickList.com integrates a user profile and their favorite product recommendations into a portable widget (what we call a PickList). Once a user creates a pick list it can be shared with family, friends or the public by adding the widget to any site that accepts it, including popular sites like MySpace, LiveJournal, Xanga, Friendster, Tagworld, Typepad, Blogger, and hi5.

What makes MyPickList.com different from other social shopping networks is that members receive a commission anytime someone buys something from an approved list of retailers. While members can add any product or retailer to their picklist they only receive commissions if the purchase came via a retailer in their network.

In looking at the featured items on MyPicklist.com, the target audience appears to be older and more affluent than StyleHive. For example featured products today included Dom Perignon 1998 with Gift Box and a Maclaren 2006 Quest Sport Stroller which are not common everyday purchases.

Just like we have seen niche social networks sprout up in 2006 it should not be a surprise to see niche social shopping search engines. For retailers, it is important to know and understand that sites like MyPickList and StyleHive exist because they can help you reach out and interact directly with your target audiences in ways that are impossible with traditional shopping search engines like PriceGrabber, Shopzilla and Froogle.