09-12-2006, 12:39 PM
Quote:Sites like ThisNext and a handful of services like Kaboodle.com, Wists.com and StyleHive.com are spearheading a new category of e-commerce called social shopping, that tries to combine two favorite online activities: shopping and social networking. These sites are hoping to ride the MySpace wave by gathering people in one place to swap shopping ideas. And like MySpace, the sites are designed for both browsing and blogging, with some shopping-related technology twists included.
Social shopping is just the latest solution to a chronic problem for online retailers and shoppers: many shoppers arent sure what to buy, but they know they wont find it on the sites of mainstream retailers like Macys, Amazon or Wal-Mart.
Online retailers often refer to this as the product discovery problem, but it might better be referred to as online retailings Teflon piñata, so many times have entrepreneurs tried to crack it...
full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/11/techno...f=business