Web surfers buying into social shopping sites

By Brian Bergstein

updated 7:33 p.m. ET Jan. 22, 2008

Beckie Tran doesn't have kids, which means she usually has no clue what presents to buy for her friends' children. Fortunately she gets advice from a separate group of buddies — including people she's never even met.

Tran gets those gift ideas, and tips on dozens of other kinds of products, from her network of friends on Kaboodle.com, a Web site devoted to the fast-growing Internet category of "social shopping."

Social shopping sites with such names as Kaboodle, ThisNext, Wishpot and StyleHive combine two of the Web's most prominent activities: engaging in commerce and chatting with like-minded folks. The sites don't directly sell things, but encourage users to share links to good bargains, obscure finds, products that work and ones that don't.

The results look much like colorful social-networking Web pages such as Facebook and MySpace, complete with personal information and lists of friends who share particular interests. But on social shopping sites, the photos and discussions revolve around products.

Many users find it utterly addicting, logging on at least daily to see products that other people are looking for or have discovered. These members say the shopping lists their fellow users post are often funky, personal elements of self-expression, as much as that may sound like an overly exalted way of describing what is, after all, consumption.

Shopping on the Internet is overwhelming, so people are driven to the big box stores' Web sites because it's easy, said Tran, 30, who designs custom wedding invitations and stationery in Santa Clara, Calif.

On Kaboodle, "you've got hundreds of people shopping together, and it's a lot of fun to see what people are finding," she said. "I found a lot of things I wouldn't have found."

For example, beyond children's gifts, Tran has come across high-quality, artisanal wrapping paper on Kaboodle, plus a $200 Crosley Traveler Stack-O-Matic record player that reminded her of ones she had as a child.

The market research firm Hitwise says social shopping is still a small corner of the Internet, accounting for way less than 1 percent of all U.S. Web visits. But visits to social shopping sites took an eightfold leap in 2007.

That attention — and the money these sites can make from ads and from sharing revenue with affiliate retailers to which they send buyers — captured the attention of Hearst Corp. The publisher recently spent an undisclosed sum to acquire Kaboodle, which is the most widely used social shopping site.

Kaboodle founder and CEO Manish Chandra sees an obvious tie to Hearst's traditional print world. Perusing the site to see all the things people want, have bought or are discussing is "almost like browsing through 10, 20, 30 different catalogs," he said.

That element exists elsewhere on the Internet, where other sites have product recommendations, price comparisons and elements of personal expression. Even major brand retailers are letting consumers post reviews — positive and negative — about their goods.

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