Some articles on social shopping sites have been posted by Caroline McCarthy last week that have increased new rounds of funding. As McCarthy enumerated, StyleFeerer increased $2 million and then at present ThisNext increased to $5 million in another round of financing from Anthem Venture Partners and Clearstone Venture Partners. This news giving stress to the mounting popularity of social shopping with venture capitalists and high expectations of a future social shopping growth.

We have already done with two social shopping protocols and a search in Google for “social shopping” offers a wide collection of sites that are competing to be in the list. I personally think these websites are not going to be successful because they are lacking one potent part: sizable communities. Some of the sites, including ThisNext have got attention of number of users but in my opinion these are not enough to give competition to the mainstream social networks that are also becoming a social shopping sites.

Facebook has made clear that they are determined to get engrossed with the social shopping market by giving developers access to their present payment system: wallet. The time when Facebook enhances their payment system API to developers, that time we are going to see a great movement in social shopping activity. Ultimately Facebook Beacon was the starting of the site’s push to capture the social shopping space that unluckily for Facebook ended in a P.R. failure rather than a technological change.

Over the next 12 to 24 months I would hope the competition will be more stiffer in this space as Facebook( and Myspace and other social sites) start their own base and integrated e-commerce attributes. So, what you think about social shopping? Do you have any information what social shopping is all about?

With the growing of Americans researching products on the internet before they are brought in stores or on the web, it’s general that a modified form of shopping trend is emerging. “Social shopping” is the alluring part of social networking and online shopping, and it can provide users business a marketing push up that it requires.

Unlike the some of retail protocols that display product for sale , many accelerating famous social shopping protocols ( some still in early stage) composed of users favourite product list, often with a impetus on what’s new and trendy and exciting. An insiders aware of the the fact that display of list of favourite product on the right social shopping website can increase excitement level that ultimately leads to sales.

This new and easy form of marketing provide a beneficial opportunities for entrepreneurs with restricted budget. Before plunging into this new ventures, lets understand reason and procedure social shopping works.

1 online research help in hiking sales. Most of the respondents to a BIG research ” Consumer Intentions and Actions”
survey conducted in June 2006 stated that they sometime or regularly find about product before purchasing them from store. On online purchasing, a research by yahoo! and OMD revealed that about three quarters of the people use trusted and familiar protocols when they buy online , and majority said that the Internet is the most convenient way of finding shopping information. So, in case you sell your product online or through store, making impact on online users can leave a long lasting effect on sales.

2. people to people suggestion yields credibility. Social shopping protocols enable word of mouth marketing at its best. The Internet give power to users and speed up the exchange of information. Product suggestion that come from friends or relatives may be more reliable , so more often users from sites advertise the positive word and buy the product they came to know on site. Social shopping protocols implies user’s liking or disliking and also provide online interaction. Visitors can get shopping ideas, what’s famous and can surf links of products that they are unable to find.

3. Sites have specific characteristics. Here ‘s list of the popular social shopping websites.

* ThisNext.com: Users can find their products, add them to their wish lists, search places where they can buy them and also create themed lists of their own.
* Crowdstorm.com: This protocols measures the popularity of products based on user recommendations. Popular items go to the top of the list.
* Kaboodle.com: Users create wish lists with photos and links to products for sale online. It’s easy to post a summary of anything found on the Internet.
* Stylehive.com: This is the good site for women’s fashions and interests.
* Wists.com: Users tend to focus on interesting new products and share links to the ones they want to buy.

4. Social shopping protocols are excellent opportunities for entrepreneurs. At present, an entrepreneur can use them to endorse their product that will leads to sales. But you d better move fast. There are some protocols that are testing free models for generating traffic and after that they would adopt paid structures as they will come in contact with target mass, but the revenue generated by marketing deals with vendors and retailers or by giving the trend information generated by users.

For any marketing campaign , firstly you have to know the media. Make a list of your favourite social shopping sites and get acquainted with their way of working. For testing, post one or two products with their links, be alert to send your clicks to landing pages , so you can measure your outcome. Then enjoy and participate actively -and make your posting exciting by giving a chance to others to share products that they want to talk about.