Given this growth for Bing Shopping, it doesn't come as a surprise that most of Bing's competitors lost some market share during the last month. All of the top 3 shopping tools (Yahoo Shopping, Bizrate, and Shopzilla) lost between 2% and 5%.

So we'd like to know which social shopping products you used or liked the best in 2010. There are 12 options below. If one of your favorites is not listed, then select 'Other' and mention it in the comments. You may choose up to 3 options.

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.

Groupon is expanding its Goods section with last Friday's purchase of Mertado, a Silicon Valley-based social shopping start-up focused on letting consumers buy products through social networks such as Facebook. Mertado's goal is create shopping experiences that "build bridges between content, commerce and community."

"Mertado has shown a great level of innovation in the social commerce space--for example, the launch of Mertado TV, combining lifestyle video content and product selection," a Groupon spokeswoman tells the Chicago Tribune. The Mertado website will officially shut down on February 28, 2012.

This announcement comes right on the heels of Facebook's addition of 60-plus social apps to Timeline, which include shopping sites eBay, Payvment, LivingSocial and Fab.com.

Earlier data showed that mobile payments on Thanksgiving Day and up until 11am PT on Black Friday had increased 516% compared to 2010. PayPal predicted that more people would be engaging in shopping from their mobile devices or tablets, which is otherwise known as "couch commerce."

Are you shopping from your mobile device or tablet? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Fresher Search Results

Until now, if you wanted to see the freshest search results, you had to apply a little URL-hack, but now, this feature has become default in the Search Options panel.

Another interesting new feature is the ability to filter results by sites you have already visited and by sites you actually haven't visited yet. This feature only works when you are signed in to your Google account and have your Web History enabled.

Books, Blogs, and News

Google already introduced the ability to just search for books a few weeks ago, so this isn't really a new feature, but the company now also allows users to filter by blogs and news. While you could obviously always use Google News or Blog Search for this, you can now easily toggle back and forth between these sources and stay within the same search interface.

Shopping

Given how hard it has become to do product research on Google, as the search results are often cluttered with shopping sites, the ability to see more or fewer shopping sites is probably the most important new feature here. As Google points out, if you are doing research and aren't ready to buy just yet, being able to tone down the number of shopping sites will be extremely helpful.

Click to view larger:

Of those who did use their tablet to make a purchase, it's notable that they fully used their tablets to do everything, from product and store research and price comparisons to the final transaction.

The same held true for tablet users who perused coupons and daily deals on their devices.

This data isn't very surprising considering Forrester's prediction earlier this year that one-third of U.S. consumers will be tablet users by 2015. With Amazon's release of the Kindle Fire tablet at the end of September, we can only predict tablet popularity continuing to grow.

"Yahoo is making a major push into search personalization and recommendations - the overall project is called "Shoposphere" and the major feature being released is called "Pick Lists". Their goal is to move ecommerce towards what they call "me commerce". Any registered Yahoo user can create a Pick List."

The Yahoo Shoposphere site has more details on Pick Lists:

"Pick Lists let you share the stuff you love and the stuff that matters to you with everyone or your friends... on the Shoposphere, throughout Yahoo! Shopping, by email, and even through RSS feeds.

Make a good one and it could even show up as one of the highest rated Pick Lists on the Shoposphere."

More analysis from me as I look further into it... I do like the "me commerce" bit :-).

Woot is bringing real-time social shopping to Amazon. We pinged ReadWriteWeb reader Michael Vorel, the CEO of commerce, Internet marketing and consulting company Vastplanet for a brief comment, and he argued that this was a competitive move against the coming media convergence that will pit Amazon against TV shopping networks.

"It's an excellent move by Amazon. Amazon needed something that was real-time shopping, in the sense of a QVC or HSN [Home Shopping Network]. It gives Amazon the opportunity to tie together with existing retailers into a daily special. With the infrastructure and connections Amazon has, it could tap into these two communities to offer better pricing and a more successful operation.

Compete says Woot got 2.2 million unique visitors in May. Facebook referred 10.5% of that traffic, so it extends far out into social media."

"The emergence of social shopping is evident in Woot, very similar to the special of the day on HSN. Amazon is looking for unique properties that fit the social shopping model that they can bring under their umbrella.

"Compete says Woot got 2.2 million unique visitors in May. Facebook referred 10.5% of that traffic, so it extends far out into social media.

"I think what we're going to see from Woot is, we'll see more interesting products roll through and maybe a hint of more categories per day. You could have a channel where you had it by category, Mens items, Women's items, etc. That would allow a lot more people to play within Woot and a lot more money to be made.

"The products they [Woot] are selling are so slim margin, they needed to look at other ways to make money. Someone like Amazon could look at behavioral learning techniques, they could learn how to serve those people. I think it's very interesting that both Zappos and Woot were big social media ecommerce companies and both were acquisitions."

That sounds like a pretty smart take on the deal to me. Woot says it will maintain its functional independence, but there's got to be some cultural cross-pollination in the plans. As media convergence brings Amazon into direct competition with at-home TV shopping, what better way to gear up than with one of the new geniuses of real-time social shopping, Woot?

Researching products is still the most popular shopping-related activity on the smartphones. According to Compete's survey, 41% of iPhone users and 43% of Android owners check sale prices while they are shopping. Surely, the popularity of mobile apps like ShopSavvy and RedLaser - which make checking prices as easy as scanning a barcode - will only drive these numbers up in the coming months.

The second most popular shopping-related activity for smartphone owners is finding consumer reviews. 39% of iPhone users and 31% of Android users use their devices for this.

Big-Ticket Items

Only 9% of iPhone users and 11% of Android users said that they would buy big-ticket items over $500 from their phone. In general, the majority of smartphone owners are most likely to buy lower-priced items under $10.

IDG reports that price comparison sites also claimed a huge increase in traffic over the 2006 holiday shopping kick-off. PriceGrabber saw referral traffic up a reported 47%, while Shopping.com watched its referrals increase 61%.

Online retailers can only expect today to be even busier. What started as a marketing gimmick a few years ago, "Cyber Monday," in which online retailers give additional discounts to shoppers (many of whom are connecting to the Internet from work for the first time following a long weekend in the US), appears to have gained industry-wide acceptance. Shop.org, an electronic retail trade group, reports that 72.2% of online retailers will participate in Cyber Monday. That is a significant increase over the 42.7% who participated just two years ago. Some retailers, such as Wal-Mart, plan to offer online deals all week, skipping the Monday tradition altogether.

72 million consumers plan to shop online today, according to BIGresearch, and comScore predicts revenues of over $700 million, which could be the start of an online shopping season some see reaching $30 billion this year.

Will you shop online this year? Have you taken advantage of any online deals yet today? Did you shop online on Friday?

"During the early years of the Web, before content had semantic meaning, sites were developed as a collection of “pages.” Sites in the 1990s were usually either brochure-ware (static HTML pages with insipid content) or they were interactive in a flashy, animated, JavaScript kind of way. In that era, a common method of promoting sites was to market them as “places”—the Web as a virtual world complete with online shopping malls and portals."

So I have to admit it is surprising that the virtual shopping mall, as a concept, is alive and well in 2006. Lately we've heard that Boo.com, an infamous 3D shopping website of the late 90's, is making a comeback later this year. But one that has actually launched already is The Mall Plus, where users navigate a virtual shopping mall in a 3D environment. All of the shops are a part of the The Mall Plus, rather than being external sites. Geekzone quotes The Mall Plus CEO Nigel Kirkpatrick as saying it's "the next generation of retail, through a virtual environment".

Perhaps if you could interact with other shoppers in The Mall Plus, then that would be a killer feature - e.g. if it became like a social networking / shopping experience. But currently the 3D people inside the mall are "lifeless and static", as one NZ 2.0 commenter noted. Another point made on the NZ 2.0 list was that virtual 3D shopping actually slows down the user experience - whereas with Amazon and other e-commerce sites, the idea is to make online shopping as efficient as possible.

I can actually see a long-term future for 3D virtual shopping, so I applaud The Mall Plus for tackling this. However I don't think it's a viable idea right now, as the likes of Amazon and eBay - along with new meta services like uGenie - are much more Web native in the year 2006. But in 2016? Who knows, maybe it will be a 3D virtual shopping world. What do you think?

Back in September, PayPal predicted that mobile payments would explode this holiday season. That seems to be true, at least thus far.

Did you shop from your couch today and last night? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.

According to AdAge, the advertising campaign, including radio and outdoor media, will launch tomorrow in 10 U.S. cities. Earlier this year that campaign was going to include a major car manufacturer and several well-known luxury brands, but due to the weakening economy, many of the early participants were forced to pull out as budgets were slashed. Tomorrow's launch will now just include McDonald's, Finish Line, and RedTag.

Mobile Tuesday's promotion will also have an online presence at a yet-to-be revealed URL. However, some 18,000 crafty shoppers have discovered the link thanks to sites posting Black Friday deals. Mobigosee already considers the campaign a success as they have surpassed their original goal of 5,000 and the campaign has not even officially begun.