Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
It's no accident that Time magazine choose YOU as their Person of the Year. In 2006, the Web was all about the social. User generated content was king this year - and the Time editor in chief is betting that the impact of this will be felt for years to come. In this article, just in time for last minute holiday shopping madness, we look at how the social aspects of the Web are transforming online shopping.
Online shopping has traditionally been one of the big activities online. Jeff Bezos recognized that a long time ago when he created Amazon.com - now the biggest online retailer in the world, by a long shot (according to Mary Meeker's stats). Nowadays most major offline retailers have websites too - and rightly so, because more and more people are buying products online. According to a comScore press release last week, this year's xmas holiday online retail spending is expected to be 25% up from the same period in 2005. comScore estimates that online retailing is running at upwards of $610 Million per day in this holiday season - and the heaviest day was expected to be sometime during the week of December 11, with sales that should approach $700 million.
So there is obviously a lot of money to be made in the market, but we also think there is a lot of room for innovation. Indeed this year has brought the wisdom of the crowds into the equation and turned shopping from a lonely to a social activity. In this post we look at five social shopping startups: Kaboodle, Stylehive, MyPickList, Wists and ThisNext. Note that this isn't a comprehensive list of companies in this space.
Based on the Alexa chart for our 5 companies, we see that Kaboodle is leading the pack - while MyPickList is substantially behind. Of the other three, Stylehive appears to be slightly ahead of ThisNext and Wists - but overall it's quite close. As our readers have pointed out many times before, Alexa traffic charts do not show the whole picture. So we also did a search for the term/tag 'ipod' to get an idea of the relative sizes of these sites. Here are the results, with the figures indicating how many times 'ipod' showed up:
Search for 'ipod':
| Kaboodle | Stylehive | MyPickList | Wists | ThisNext |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4244 | 350 | 72 | 367 | 209 |
The results support that Kaboodle is ahead. But why?
Each of these sites offers a combination of unique features - and ones that are common to all. What is it then that makes a user choose one site over another?
Ever since CEO Manish Chandra proclaimed from the DEMO
stage that shopping needs to be social, Kaboodle's popularity has been on the rise. When
Kaboodle had only 20K active users, it managed to secure a partnership
with eBay - and it became clear that this company was going to be a major player in
the world of social commerce. Kaboodle offers a robust and simple set of features. Users
can collect shopping items from many sites using the Kaboodle toolbar. The items can then
be organized into collections, reviewed and shared with other users.
Each collection can be viewed as a list, grid, slideshow and collage. Of these, the first two are very useful - while slideshow and collage are more like eye candy.
Kaboodle nails the usability for key social features: it is really easy to copy a single item or a whole list, and it is also easy to rate items or the entire list. Finally, the search on Kaboodle works very well - making the service simple, yet complete.
Stylehive is geared more towards
fashion. Surprisingly the site is not as clean as Kaboodle. The index page is bulky and
it is not obvious what to do. However beyond that first page, Stylehive does a good job
on the UI. There are views of Web Sites, Items, Tags and People that are compact and
quite useful. Each view focuses on an aspect, such as person, but also offers quick links
to other aspects like recent items, tags and visited sites. Particularly notable is the
view of popular sites, which does not seem to be available on Kaboodle.
Stylehive search has a vertical flavor to it. After the user types in some text and runs the query, the results are displayed as a layer. The results can be refined by tags, text, sites and other criteria - making the search useful and easy.
We did not notice other compelling features on the site. The entire experience seems more disconnected than on Kaboodle. There are definitely interesting elements and ideas here, but they need to be glued together better to create more of a flow for the user.
MyPickList launched in early May
with a focus to help people make money on the items they like. Based on the traffic
chart, it has not really picked up. We spent time on the site in order to understand what
is going on there. The first thing that stood out is that the data capturing capability
is inferior to that of Kaboodle. Users are asked to enter everything manually. In
addition, once the item is captured for the user - it is not obvious where it actually
ends up.
The social features offered on the site are few compare to Kaboodle. The search feature is simple and practical, but there do not seem to be enough users on the site to make it useful. The biggest feature is supposed to be the widgets, which can be embedded into blogs and social networks. This is done nicely. The widgets can be customized in a number of ways: colors, skins and layouts.
Despite the fact that widgets are done well, the site feels empty and under-developed. Perhaps refocusing it and doing widgets only is the way to go. As it stands, we have to conclude that the low traffic is probably an indicator of low usage.
Wists is another site that we visited
for this faceoff. It has a very clean look and a very basic (perhaps too basic) set of
features. The index page has a nice overview of the latest popular picks and draws
attention to the search box. The search works well, as it is easy to look things up.
Next, we created an account and tried adding an item. This is where the site stopped being exciting. When clicking to add an item from Amazon, the user is asked to choose from around 100 images that appear on the page. Kaboodle chooses the most appropriate one automatically and it makes a big difference. However back at the site, the interface for managing the list is fine. One feature that we found interesting is the ability to publish a single item on a web site. This is basically the same as a widget, but the packaging and presentation of this feature on Wists was nice. Other features amounted to a subset of what is offered on Kaboodle - and did not seem that impressive or innovative.
ThisNext, our final
contender, is hitting the market with a gorgeous all-flash site. The site itself is very
snappy and inviting. It is not, however, as fast as Kaboodle - particularly the search
function. Still, the design of the site and the presentation of the items compensates for
this.
Another notable feature at ThisNext are the badges. They are great looking and easy to assemble. But beyond a nice design and pretty badges, we did not see anything groundbreaking. It seems like the site needs to innovate more to stand out from the pack.
Not surprisingly, Kaboodle leads the social shopping pack with a clean UI and the most comprehensive feature set. It is difficult to see how the others can catch up to it. Perhaps Stylehive and ThisNext appeal to more artsy types, but they will need more than just flare to lure Kaboodle's users away.
Most notably, there is still big room for innovation in this market. Kaboodle has nailed the basic feature set, but much more can be done based on the power of masses and technologies like RSS. We expect to see many more innovations in 2007, such as personalized recommendations, product alerts and interactive chats based on where you are shopping.
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Social context is about identity and identity translates into buying - that's the oldest truth there is, so the social web, web 2.0 that is, spells money.
Posted by: Mikael Bergkvist | December 19, 2006 10:10 PM
another great post.
the opportunity in social shopping is large and, in my opinion, is just getting started. i know the team at kaboodle, and they are doing a great job as the leader in this space.
look for many exciting things to happen in 2007 in the area of social shopping. i suspect this space will heat up with some significant announcements before the end of next year (2007).
Posted by: Laurence Toney | December 19, 2006 10:34 PM
I came across a social e-commerce site (www.primocart.com) that might break out in 2007. The business model looks promising... They seem to be just another shopping cart solution, but the kicker is that they enable bloggers to sell products and earn commission on their web site without changing their design, and the customer never leaves the web site to checkout.
So far, I'm intrigued. I'd like to see them incorporate RSS feeds, allow consumers to search for product deals, provide an open API and some of the other features mentioned in this article.
Posted by: George Mclandon | December 19, 2006 10:39 PM
George,
There is a similar one: rightcart.com. As I see the issues with these:
- Get people to embed them
- Have a rich product DB
- Blend in
- Drive transactions
- Keep track of accounting
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | December 19, 2006 10:54 PM
Alex,
Thanks for a great post. We are running hard. Expect to see more features soon as we continue to learn from our users.
Manish Chandra
Founder & CEO, Kaboodle.com
Posted by: Manish Chandra | December 19, 2006 11:03 PM
Just for your information, our service, Zlio.com, a French ecommerce 2.0 service have more trafic than Kaboodle (and all the others) on Alexa.
Our service allows any internet user to create an online store even if they nothing to sell. (http://sudoku.zlio.com for example).
The service will be launched in Us very very soon :-)
You've already written about us here:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/france_web_market.php
I don't understand what do you mean by the "Ipod" search on your post to compare the services ? Where have you searched for this term ? on Google ?
Posted by: Jeremie Berrebi (Zlio.com) | December 19, 2006 11:30 PM
I am pretty sure that thisnext is not "all flash". All of these sites are pretty nifty, but I wonder if their basic functionality would not be integrated into other exisiting sites and thus strip them of audience and purpose.
Posted by: Ted | December 20, 2006 1:18 AM
There is also Crowdstorm at http://www.crowdstorm.com which focuses on helping people find what to buy through showing what products are buzzy and what people you trust are recommending. I'm one of the founders and passionate about the social shopping space.
We're the No.1 social shopping site based in Europe and already operate a US version of the site.
You're right that we're all innovating rapidly behind the scenes and no one has yet nailed this space. I think we're pretty close though when come out of beta next year..
Posted by: Philip Wilkinson | December 20, 2006 5:40 AM
There is also http://DealsPl.us which focuses on helping people find hot deals.
Posted by: David | December 20, 2006 7:24 AM
Great article! But you seem to have only covered one facet of social shopping: user contributed products. There are at least two other major forms of social shopping that you didn't cover. Another is deal based social shopping like the aforementioned Dealspl.us where users submit and/or rate deals in a Digg fashion. The other encompasses reviews and price comparison. This is more in-line with sites like Pricegrabber, but with more social features. Our site http://www.hawkee.com/shop/ is in the 3rd category and focuses on product tagging, reviews, comments and questions. I'm sure we'll see more forms of social shopping as we move in to 2007, so I'm really excited to see what comes about.
Posted by: Scott Aikin | December 20, 2006 8:58 AM
I'm only doing this because another niche site (stylehive) was mentioned...Curbly (http://curbly.com) is a great implementation of social shopping. It's a diy network but would certainly contend with any you've profiled.
Posted by: aaron | December 20, 2006 10:05 AM
The elephant in the room that no one mentions is that the traffic moving across the social shopping sites is tiny. While these sites are doing comparable traffic to Red Envelope or Gifts, they are leagues behind sites like epinions or cnet.
Posted by: Russell | December 20, 2006 10:20 AM
Alex,
Thanks for the nice words about our UI. As ThisNext's product guy I'd like to clarify a few things.
ThisNext is the only service profiled that is actually about products instead of bookmarks. We will treat a recommendation for an iPod as a recommendation for an iPod regardless of where on the web it comes from -- on the other services you are actually talking about a specific url. This allows us to determine what products our community finds valuable and enable product discovery:
http://www.thisnext.com/discover/
We aim to be the best way to find products you'll love -- window shopping for the web through user recommendations rather than a social bookmarking tool.
Our focus on products also makes the search results count comparison not meaningful, as just one of our search results:
http://www.thisnext.com/item/3B1CD801/Apple-iPod
actually represents 128 recommendations (posts) that started from many different urls. It is comparing apples and oranges.
We are also a resource for the blogging community to more easily blog about products. Want to create a post about an iPod with a nice image that we host in a single step (even if you aren't a user)? Just hit BlogIt to get single step posting to Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad or MT (and HTML you can copy for the rest):
https://www.thisnext.com/blogit/item/3B1CD801/Apple-iPod
If you are a user and have entered your affiliate IDs, we will automatically use your affiliate information for the badges and blog posts, saving you considerable work.
Thanks for including ThisNext in the faceoff,
Craig Ogg
Co-founder
ThisNext
Posted by: Craig Ogg | December 20, 2006 11:06 AM
You've overlooked StyleFeeder.com.
Posted by: Aaron | December 20, 2006 12:08 PM
Alex: You might want to look at iNods which is empowering "social research" which increasingly plays a role in buying decisions.
Also, dealplumber allows social deal sharing which can be handy for users looking for deals before they buy a product they have decided on.
Cheers,
-Vaibhav
Posted by: Vaibhav Domkundwar | December 20, 2006 12:29 PM
Yeah, I also vouch for Curbly.
Posted by: Tees My Body | December 20, 2006 12:39 PM
Don't agree with Time magazine. "YOU" Person of the year?!!! So basically, for the rest of Time Magazine Person of the year articles will be lame. Total cop out. If "You" are person of the year this year, then "You" should be it next year, the following year and every year after because the interaction of the web is only going to grow. STUPID Time Magazine. So, who really should be the Person of the Year? I think it should be the group that danced on tread mills! They put their stuff on YouTube and then get a deal on the music awards!!!! That's real talent and risk! hahahahaha. The other person of the year could be the designer of IPOD because once again, this year it is ruling our world. Those are the Persons of the Year. Not "You" because of "You" did diddly squat on the web except read and :) complain :) about it. While the real entrepeneurs and risk takers made something of it! Merry Christmas by the way.
Posted by: Dave | December 20, 2006 5:07 PM
Amazon and eBay are known by snapping up any startup that really creates some sort of innovation in their fields.. So these companies should also be in their radars.
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | December 22, 2006 1:03 AM
Another great article, thank you. I looked at all of the sites you mentioned and all of the commented sites as well, and I would concur that they all have points, but fall short.
Props to Kaboodle , the bigger the database, the better the results. Extra points for the name, double o's are sexy.
I had heard of MyPickList. Widgets are great and you can do a lot of damage if you can get hordes of Bloggers or MySpacers to embed them.
By far the best visually, and the most 2.0, would have to be ThisNext. The excellent interface made me want to browse for things I can not afford.
That's what seems wrong with these sites. People online do not want to window shop. They want relevant results in fractions of a second. For myself, I want to know what's the best product at the most affordable price and being a little skeptical, I want to know if the information is from an honest reliable source or a carnival barker.
Your article does just that for social shopping sites. Honest evaluation.
My idea of social shopping would be perhaps as easy as voting for the best cell phone and where to get it. It might not be the best choice for me, but the masses have concluded it's best for the whole. On the other hand voting for the worst could help me avoid making a mistake. I'd like to know if the batteries explode or cause cancer.
In the end, I want something my wife can take out of the box, and happily start using without reading a manual, and not break before the warranty expires. If it meets that test, it will be certified "Susy Proof" and everyone will want one.
Posted by: Dale | December 22, 2006 9:24 PM
Dale,
Excellent comments. I think Digg-like social shopping site would be really popular. Hey Digg guys, can you do that?
It is interesting that you mentioned window shopping. I was just discussing with my wife the difference between buying books in the store vs online and renting movies in Blockbuster vs on Netflix. Fundamentally, there is no additional information that you get by holding DVD. With the book its different and so is with clothes. Some things are just best done online.
And to your point, something that I just can not do at all (yet) in the store is know what others think of the item that I am holding in my hands. So this is really where the web excels and should focus on.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | December 23, 2006 2:34 PM
Alex:
Nice article. It is well researched and informative.
You may want to check out mobile deal finding startup http://www.text2store.com . I came across their press release and even though they are still in limited beta phase, I like the ideal for people on the go. Who likes to spend all day in front of the computer.
Posted by: Larry | December 30, 2006 12:31 PM