Web 2.0 Stores > Fast, Simple, Search Engine Friendly Ecommerce

The Santa Clara-based social shopping site Kaboodle is due to announce some major news at midnight EST. The first announcement is that they’re partnering with Shopping.com, who will supply their entire product catalogue to Kaboodle. The move will expand Kaboodle’s product listings to millions of items from thousands of merchants, and they’re leveraging Shopping.com’s API to make the magic happen. But the more interesting news is that they’re getting into the widget game. Once the site goes back online (it’s down for maintenance at the moment), you’ll be able to arrange a collection of your Kaboodle items into a collage, then convert it into a Flash widget for MySpace, Friendster, Xanga, blogs and websites. The widget will also allow other users to contribute items to the collection. What’s more, they’re launching Flash slideshows for MySpace and blogs, and new ways to view your Kaboodle content - either as an itinerary or a grid. One final addition: they’re launching Kaboodle Groups, which will allow multiple users to collaborate on a collection of items, complete with voting and commenting. The launch of widgets makes Kaboodle directly competitive with MyPickList, the product recommendation service from Sprout Commerce. Sprout also have a purely widget-based product that targets social networks more specifically - FavoriteThingz. Similar services include RightCart, an online store widget for your blog sidebar, and the French product recommendation service Zlio, which is expected to release an English version at some point. Meanwhile, CrowdStorm’s social network for shopping will include so-called MySpace codes when the public beta becomes available. Following so soon after the eBay deal, Kaboodle seems to be on a roll - I can only imagine that they’re headed for acquisition further down the road.

ThisNext, which launched this morning, is a new social network for shopping. You can add and recommend items by entering the product’s URL, searching for items using ThisNext’s database and web search or by installing the bookmarklet in your browser. You can also create lists of similar products, add items to your wishlist and buy products directly from the site. What’s more, you can generate traffic for your blog by trackbacking the item pages (note that trackbacks from Blogger won’t work for now). The key feature: ThisNext uses an Amazon-style recommendation system to suggest what you should buy next (hence the name!). The profile and networking features are pretty straightforward - you can upload photos, write an About Me section and add your favorite websites. You can’t make friends directly with other members, but you can add them to your list of recommended users, which displays their username and profile picture on your page - I think that almost passes for social networking. In a feature that’s similar to MyPickList and Favorite Thingz, your profile editor also has a field for your Amazon affiliate ID, allowing you to earn money when people buy items through your Shopcast badge. Which brings us to the badges. It goes without saying that you can get a ThisNext widget to post on your blog, although these seem to be javascript-based. If that’s the case, they won’t work on major social networks like MySpace, Friendster and hi5, thus cutting off a major source of traffic (the only major network where javascript seems to work reliably is Piczo). ThisNext is a nicely-designed offering, but they’re entering a crowded market - Crowdstorm (not yet launched), Kaboodle, Wists, Dealbundle, WhatsBuzzing and StyleHive are just some of the players in this active space. ThisNext mashes up features from all these sites, but switches the focus to product recommendations. Is that enough to make them stand out from the crowd? I’m not sure. In the end, it all comes down to how these companies perform over the long term - can they plug into other networks, retain the visitors they receive and build critical mass? Those questions are impossible to respond to on day one, and it’s much easier to sit on the fence until the answers become apparent.

ThisNext User?Mashable’s ThisNext profile is here - feel free to add Mashable to your recommended users list.

Crowdstorm, the social shopping site that first appeared on Mashable back in May, has started an invite-only beta. Crowdstorm is basically a cross between social networking, a Digg-like voting system and a shopping search engine - you submit products to the site using a form, and others can vote for the item by hitting the “recommend it!” button. What’s more, you can comment on items, add them to your wishlist, edit the product descriptions and search for the product on sites like eBay and Kelkoo. It goes without saying that there’s also a MySpace-style social network: you can create a profile, upload a picture, add friends and send messages to other users. Additional features include forums, tagging and RSS feeds. But Crowdstorm is really about two metrics: “buzz” and “Storm Points”. Buzz represents how much activity is going on around a product - are people voting for it? Are people blogging about it? You can rank items by buzz or recency, but I’ve no idea how they counteract negative buzz (ie. lots of people blogging about how poor a product is). It’s also worth noting that “blogging” doesn’t refer to some watered-down blog tool on Crowdstorm itself - instead, you can post items to your own blog and link back to the product page. Meanwhile, Storm Points are the points awarded to users for adding products, voting, leaving comments and blogging about items. They’re currently working on Crowdstorm widgets (feeding the MySpace beast, presumably) and a reputation system. Crowdstorm is really neat - well-designed and easy to use. But this is also an extremely crowded space - RightCart, MyPickList, WhatsBuzzing, ShopWiki, Zlio, Kaboodle and Wists are all trying variations on this theme. In the end, it comes down to execution: the idea may be great on paper, but it remains to be seen who performs best over the next few years.

Shopify is a simple to use, easy to setup ecommerce software application for Online merchants who want to manage and sell their products or services. Shopify motto pretty much sums it up for me “A shop in minutes, a business for life.”

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The birth of Web 2.0 has brought about several ecommerce 2.0 services and applications that are currently available to users interested in unique ecommerce services and features related to Web 2.0. The following list describes and links to many of the popular ecommerce 2.0 services.

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