

Ask HN: Does social shopping work? - adityakothadiya

In real life, shopping is sometimes social, but sometimes its not. There are times when you want to ask friends' advice before you buy, or want to show off things that you buy, or just see what they are buying. But sometimes you don't want to do these things - and it's very personal.<p>But for the times when it's social, a lot of can be done in online world. Many companies have tried it, but somehow something is still missing. I still believe that current online social shopping is not done correctly.<p>So I'm currently trying to bring a fresh new approach of social shopping experience on the web. I've some plans and vision. But before going in that direction, the first thing I want to do is validate the potential customers. I'm trying to understand if people really want this thing? So I'm asking fellow HNers..<p>Do you believe social shopping work online? If yes, how you want to use it?<p>IMO, the important aspects of social shopping are - i) Discovery and ii) Sharing.<p>What is important to you?<p>I think people are already sharing lots of shopping information already on different services on the web - like Twitter, Facebook, etc. But what about Discovery?<p>I believe social shopping works, but when it comes to you, rather than you going towards it.<p>What are your expectations? What do you think is still missing or needs to be done correctly? Please discuss. Your inputs will be very valuable to brainstorm on how I try to solve this problem.<p>Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts.
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vaksel
I just launched a site that kinda covers this for the style
niche(clothes/shoes/accessories), one of the things I focus on is the
discovery/recommendations angle.(<http://styleguidance.com>)

A problem I'm seeing with recommendations, is the lack of answers after the
first couple get posted. I think people just don't want to waste the time
searching for an answer, when they are seeing a perfectly good suggestion
already posted. It takes a lot of time to find a good suggestion, so the users
just don't want to bother, unless they know they can make a difference.

Pretty much the only times I've seen a 4th answer, is when a person starts out
their reply with "all of those other choices suck, here is my recommendation"

Or it could be because the site is just starting out, and a year down the
line, you'll be able to get 20 different suggestions...time will tell

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harryliu111
For me, these things will get my attention on social shopping site: 1\. what
my friend bought recently. human being has curiosity. 2\. what is running hot
in my local area. 3\. I want to buy something, but, instead of doing intensive
research online by myself, I'd like to see what people say about it. I will
give higher weight for what my friend say, then what people has similar
background like me say, and then total strangers.

Harry

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RahulPandhe
Yes. It will work but not in the limited sense of shopping. We just launched
<http://www.DoTogether.com>. Try out the facebook app, bit geeky but you will
like the direction we are going.

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jasonlbaptiste
Aardvark applied to shopping would be pure brilliance. Few companies have the
potential to be 10 figures big, but that could be one of them.

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hipsterelitist
I'm actually working on exactly this for fashism.com

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vaksel
Looks like we are in the same space...although it doesn't look like we are
targeting the same user. So since we aren't really competing, good luck guys
:)

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dannyr
Plurchase is in the same category. Not sure what kind of traction they have.

