After sleeping through some important developments the last couple of years, the social shopping segment is now bustling with hectic activity. The former pioneers are re-orienting themselves and are in part rolling out completely new strategies:
- The boldest plans are most definitely being nurtured by Etsy. We’ve reported on them several times already.
- ThisNext and Stylehive are coupling together as Curatemedia (“to dominate social shopping”) and want to run a bundle of niche sites. “What should I buy?” is the motto here (and not only for the users).
- Stylefeeder gets bought out and is taken under the wing of Time Inc. In this new relationship, Stylefeeder should dock into InStyle.
- Kaboodle, a part of the publishing group Hearst, puts its hopes on a fundamental redesign and wants in the future to swim on the “realtime” wave.
- Zlio pays tribute to their roots with Shopmarking (“On the fly social shopping”).
- Still unclear is how the German players will react. It goes without saying that Edelight and Smatch are needing at least one or two upgrades.
In general the developments should tend away from social shopping and towards personal shopping.
Blippy, Whosrich and others like them may not be the last answer, but could be indicators of which direction the world is turning. Shopping will become an increasingly personalized activity which will migrate out into one's circle of friends.
Thanks to Murat Icer for the valuable contributions to this post.
Related posts:
- From Social Shopping to Personal Shopping Network
- Etsy 2010: How Social Can Commerce Get?
- Magento Matters: Social Shopping with Facebook and Magento
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
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