I posted recently about my favorite social shopping sites. I am continuing to brainstorm and prototype in this area. I wanted to update and my list to send it to a friend. Here is what has been influencing me lately.
I’m Lookmarking my research here: Social Shopping, and under the code name Shoptu.
* FashMatch.com – This one just showed up on the radar today. Create outfits with your friends.
* StyleHive, Kaboodle – leaders in social bookmarking for shopping (there are probably 10 other competitors in this category). There are a lot of shopping and style related blogs – many devoting their sidebars to the glam.com ad network.
* coverpop.com – fairly static but innovative user interface – see a lot of products at once.
* Etsy Sampler – I love the way this is interactive, but there is not much to do besides drag stuff around.
* http://shopping.live.com/ – Microsoft is really trying hard. I believe this indicates the limits of AJAX. An interactive shopping UI is going to have to be Flash. They have decent breadth but not enough depth to their product feeds.
* base.google.com – Google’s open API gives them more products than Microsoft. It is interesting that Google is shying away from Froogle (removing it from the homepage). Is there something “richer” in the works, or are they content to become the middle man with the Base API?