A Look at ShopWiki

[mandy]

ShopWiki is one of the most creative, intuitive concepts I have ever seen spun from the comparison shopping engine business model. Their crawler based CSE is smart, powerful and capable of including products from nearly every merchant seller online (given the site is crawler friendly). ShopWiki is also currently the most recognized shopping engine in existence that utilizes the power of user generated content through their built-in wiki platform.

ShopWiki was originally founded by two ex-DoubleClick execs, Kevin Ryan and Dwight Merriman, and Eliot Horowitz in 2005. Since launch, ShopWiki has continued on their goal to find and index every possible offer by a merchant that can be purchased online. ShopWiki is an advanced shopping crawler, product engine, wiki or gift guide, social community and much more. They currently even offer user submitted shopping video content and product reviews...

full article: http://www.ecommerceoptimization.com/art...-shopwiki/

[mandy]

A related article: ShopWiki raises $1 million in a second round of funding:

ShopWiki Inc. has raised more than $1 million in a second round of financing and plans to invest the funds in social shopping, international expansion and mobile commerce. Generation Partners invested $1 million and ShopWiki’s founders invested what the company describes as “a few hundred thousand dollars” more.

ShopWiki’s business model has fluctuated over the years. It began as a pure wiki, where Internet users add content on the subject at hand. But consumers did not add much content, and there weren’t many consumers visiting the site to begin with. Ultimately, the site evolved into what today is essentially a price comparison site.

Company executives, however, are aiming to get the site back to its roots in the social web so it can live up to its name. Now that traffic is increasing significantly—from 15,000 unique visitors a day in April to 80,000 a day in July—they say they have a critical mass of shoppers who, with an improved site design and easier wiki and social tools, will contribute more content...

full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=27364