Here are my initial thoughts…
You were wondering about my fascination with social shopping? Well, Yahoo! Shopping just launched Shoposphere Beta. This is the first major update to Yahoo! Shopping in over 2 years (Version 5.0 if you’re keeping track). As explained by Rob Solomon and Chris Saito, the new Yahoo! Shopping helps users Find, Use, Share, and Expand (FUSE).
Ok, everyone likes acronyms, but what is Yahoo! really doing? Yes, user generated product reviews are more apparent. Yes, there are more coupons and deals on the site. But this update is really about the Shoposphere.
Simply put, the Shoposphere allows Yahoo! Shopping users to create, share, comment, and rate ‘pick lists’. The key difference between pick lists and the wish lists we’ve all seen in the past is that pick lists aren’t just about the products you want, but about the products you’re passionate about. Yes, Shoposphere sounds like Blogosphere for a reason. Blogs are a personal publishing platform that allow a person to easily talk about an interest. The Shoposphere, through individual pick lists, does the same thing for products. I’m passionate about science fiction books, so I put up a pick list about the best science fiction novels. Someone else put up a pick list about jeans men shouldn’t buy. Another person put up a pick list of the top 10 gangster films. The possibilities for pick lists are endless and so the Shoposphere should grow at a torrid pace.
While pick lists can be private (only the author can see it) or shared (the author can share it with a select few), the Shoposphere is made up of pick lists which authors have chosen to share with all of the Yahoo! Shopping community.
Once a pick list is created, anyone who is registered with a Yahoo! account can leave a comment and rate a pick list (as useful or not). My pick list can rise to the top of all pick lists by being highly rated (although at this point Yahoo! hasn’t organized the pick lists in a useful way – like the Feedster top 500 or Technorati’s top 100 and the pick lists aren’t searchable or part of a directory. Actually, you can search pick lists, but the search field is hidden at the bottom of the page. This will have to change soon for the Shoposphere to be interesting.)
While someone can always type ‘best science fiction books’ into Yahoo! or Google, the Shoposhere marries content and commerce, aggregating the information in one place and therefore saving the shopper time and money (Yahoo! Shopping is a comparison engine after all). As certain pick lists become more popular, they can be used as targeted buying guides.
As Rob Solomon of Yahoo! Shopping told me in an interview in July “More content will be coming into play [on Yahoo! Shopping] over time. People are going from site to site bookmarking, and it’s not easy. We want to make it easy for people to shop. We want to provide the perfect information for the buying mode they’re in. Yahoo! Shopping will pull in content such as ratings, reviews, blogs, etc., so users have as much information as possible.”
What’s missing on most shopping comparison engines is an answer to the question: ‘What should I buy?’ All comparison engines do a great job of helping you figure out where to buy and how much you should pay, but what to buy is a different issue. Social shopping through the Shoposhere is one answer to this question. I’m not saying it’s the answer, but it has the potential to be a driver of commerce. Just as I’d follow an Epinions top reviewer when considering a purchase, I might follow a Shoposphere pick list if I agreed with some of the author’s picks.
In this way, Yahoo! Shopping is aggregating tons of user generated Web 2.0-esque content to help people make buying decisions. Eventually, I can see pick lists showing up in searches and on product pages right next to product reviews. At some point in the future, a pick list author might even get a commission for products bought through his pick list (similar to how Yub works).
This is Yahoo! taking a risk, putting something out there and seeing what sticks. This is Yahoo! making a bet on social shopping. People are passionate about topics (thus the blogosphere), but are often just as passionate about the products they purchase (thus the Shoposphere). There will be plenty of consumer electronics related pick lists in the Shoposphere, but I think the real value of the Shoposphere is with the soft products which are more about style than function. Apparel shopping is a great example of where social shopping is needed. The ‘Jean guide for men‘ pick list is a gem and probably only the tip of the iceberg. At the same time, though, pick lists are all about a passion – and people can be just as passionate about blenders, air conditioners, and mops as they are about consumer electronics or clothes.
While Yahoo! can afford to test a cool new concept, in the end, the Shoposphere’s purpose is to drive clicks and sales. Just as highly rated stores on comparison engines have higher click-through and conversion rates, individual products within highly rated pick lists (or even just your friend’s pick list) should have higher click-through and conversion rates.
Yahoo! Shopping is putting its future in the hands of a huge social network, the members of which are responsible for expanding on the general information (mostly in the form of reviews) that’s already available. We live in an online world where people are social and voyeuristic by nature (think MySpace). People also love to hear themselves speak and be known as the expert or guru on a particular subject (think Epinions and Blogs). Yahoo! Shopping’s Shoposphere marries these two ideas with commerce to become one of the first large scale experiments in online social shopping. Add this to Yahoo! Shopping’s focus on personalization (through companies like ChoiceStream – which helps power Yahoo! Shopping’s gift finder), and users, merchants, and Yahoo! should benefit.
Shopocalypse now
Commentary on Yahoo’s Shoposphere has largely been positive, aside from references to the goofy name. The Yardlosphere is fine with the name, actually, having a relatively high tolerance for neologisms that aren’t ‘grok’. (In fact, I think I’ll …
Greg is right…the Shoposphere is a long term project which won’t be a big deal until people are incentivized to publish their lists. Referral fees through the Shoposphere could eventually be a game changer and force the other comparison engines to run a similar program. Most comparison engines do have large affiliate partners, but this would allow individual publishers to benefit.
[...] ing Stories: Comparison Shopping – Important Holiday Season Happenings – November 26, 2005 The Shoposphere – A Closer Look at the New Yahoo! Shopping – November 15, 2005 Integration of Shopping C [...]