Bing Adds Facebook, Twitter Sharing To Shopping

May 9, 2010 at 9:52am ET by Greg Sterling

There are a number of “social shopping” sites and, of course, numerous product or shopping-related blogs. Among the most visible in the first category are Kaboodle, ThisNext/Stylehive and Polyvore. They offer tools and features that allow people to share, compare and vote on products. The mainstream shopping comparison engines such as Shopping.com or PriceGrabber don’t fully enter into this realm, although Shopping.com is giving away an iPad if you become a “fan” on Facebook:

One could argue that the group-buying phenomenon, exemplified by sites like Groupon and LivingSocial (although there are literally dozens more), also falls into the category — though there isn’t any interaction among the participants. I’ve also argued in the past that social shopping is a natural area for Facebook and that the site could rival the largest comparison sites if it chose to develop it and/or partner with a product database (e.g., PriceGrabber).

This might be an opportunity for Yahoo as well.

I was told at one point by NearbyNow‘s CEO Scott Dunlap that the company went out and observed how people were using mobile devices while shopping. He said that they saw people taking pictures of products in the store with their phones and then sending them to friends for “real time” feedback via MMS or email. In that context the new sharing features on Bing Shopping make perfect sense.

Just as with other categories of search results on Bing, you can now send product listings to Facebook, Twitter or via email to selected individuals with a single click:

This is a small but important change that might have even more significance, as discussed, in a mobile context if people begin to look for feedback in “real time” on which camera or pair of shoes to buy. This general arena of shopping + social is largely undeveloped and ripe for further innovation.

We’re sure to see more from Bing and others as social shopping heats up.

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling

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leylmaster

Hi Greg – I’m really fascinated by this trend and interested to see how social shopping evolves. Mitchell Harper at BigCommerce just posted a related article on this topic – he gives some predictions for how Facebook’s Open Graph will impact e-commerce. Thought you might want to check it out:

http://mashable.com/2010/05/07/facebook-open-graph-ecommerce/
frugal2010

Well this is a good piece although Greg did miss one major item of note. There are some comparison shopping engines that actually are very involved with social shopping and have been for some time. SortPrice.com, for one, has two apps on Facebook that are growing in popularity–one for retailers to sell items and another for shoppers to build wishlists and interact with their friends on preferred items. I’d expect other CSEs to follow suit if they have not done so already.