For many who love to shop online like I do, the next best things to buying merchandise are browsing and chatting about merchandise-planning the next strike, so to speak. The continual evolution of social networking and consumer-generated content is enabling online shoppers to move beyond transactions to achieve shop-talk unlike anything they’ve ever experienced. It’s one big think to talk with a couple friends over dinner and get their opinions on the latest goods, but it’s something else entirely to get recommendations from and provide feedback to a couple hundred-thousand fellow consumers. A multitude of shoppers are able to interact & pick & choose & recommend products with other shoppers online. Social shopping sites enable just that ! They connect consumers and give rise to discussions and recommendations, unlike comparison shopping sites, which typically focus on weighting product prices and attributes. Further, they are independent of e-retailer sites and e-retailers product reviews. I think that e-retailers should take them seriously as they redefine e-commerce. Just here some US examples I find interesting : Kaboodle, ShopWiki, StyleFeeder, ThisNext, StyleHive and CrowdStrom.