Social Commerce via the Shoposphere & Pick Lists
Today we released the Shoposphere and Pick Lists beta, plus enhancements to our core shopping search capabilities, which we hope you’ll try out during your holiday gift-giving spree.
The Shoposphere and Pick Lists are examples of social commerce. We believe the community of shoppers is one of the best sources for product information and advice. The Shoposphere is a place to discover interesting and cool products thematically arranged into Pick Lists by other shoppers. It’s always changing. It includes new lists in a ‘product stream’ and highest rated lists which are a fun way to explore new products and trends. The Shoposphere will continue to evolve as a hub for other types of user-generated content.
Pick Lists are lists of products on any topic, and can include any of the 90 million products available through Yahoo! Shopping. With Pick Lists, users can share their knowledge about products they’ve researched for the benefit of the community. Anyone can view a Pick List in the Shoposphere, rate it, and comment on it. What we like most is that Pick Lists show off the ‘long tail’ of shopping search. It’s not just about digital cameras and iPods, but anything you can think of. You can peruse Pick Lists for such delights as fake food, denim leg warmers, and fuel cell experiment kits. And, we’ve also integrated the Yahoo! 360 social network into Pick Lists (and user reviews) so you can see if you’re connected to the creator of the content.
We’ve also done a lot to improve our core shopping search, starting with a new search UI with easier scanning of prices and product reviews. We’ve integrated deals into search results so that free shipping offers, rebates, and coupons are a click of the mouse away. My Lists allow you to easily save, organize, and share product lists. You can make multiple lists including wish lists for you or your friends or lists for researching products, etc. And these lists are easy to share with email and RSS or can be kept private. Finally we’ve launched a new product overview page that integrates editorial reviews, user reviews, product specs, deals and price comparison ‘ all in one place to help you make informed buying decisions.
That’s it for now. Please check out the Shoposphere, build a Pick List, and tell us what you think of our shopping search capabilities. The beta is a first step and we plan on rolling out more and more features to make this the best experience possible. Look for tagging, search enhancements, more 360 integration, badges for putting a Pick List on your blog, and other surprises coming soon. We’d love your feedback on this.
David Beach
Product Manager, Yahoo! Shopping
Vivek Gupta
Engineering Manager, Yahoo! Shopping
I really like how Yahoo! is working to add a social aspect to many of its sites. In just the past couple months, you’ve improved and added social aspects to Search, Local, Travel, Auto, and now Shopping.
I’m glad to see Yahoo! being innovative as far as personalization and sharing go. Yahoo! may not be as AJAXy as Google, but it is making more of a community out of its users and I think that will be most important in the long run.
I love the wishlist feature! It would be great to send you product recommendations to other people (friend, spouse) to see if they are interested.
Also, you should be able to quickly save all items (or use tick boxes) in someone else’s Pick List. It’s too time consuming to save long lists (eg, lists of top CDs).
I just skimmed the surface, but from what it looks like you’re trying to do, Amazon’s been doing for a long time. Wouldn’t a collaboration with Amazon be less redundant?
Firefox keeps loading…and a refresh doesn’t show new comments
I today got a chance to check Google Base and Yahoo!’s Shoposphere. What I saw at Google Base was disappointing to say the least. Just splogosphere version 2. I searched for some test keywords and already found thousands of pages of homepages. Not worth my time at the moment. May be later things will improve.
Yahoo’s Shoposphere is a truly innovative and not a “me too” product. Kudos to David, Gupta and the entire Yahoo! team for something that is truly innovative.
Good job. Keep it up :)
Frank Mash / SoftwareEngineer99
Just a note to let folks know that we pushed out an update for Pick Lists and the Shoposphere.
1. We integreated My Web 2.0 saving for every Pick List. We’ll be introducing other tools soon.
2. We enhanced the Pick List and My List edit pages. We made it easier to change or edit the content as well as improved some feature discoverablility.
3. We integrated Pick List “navigation” through popular keyword or Pick List theme searches. This should help folks discover new Pick Lists and the interesting products in them.
4. Other changes include Overture listings, improved search, and the ability to choose an ID for comments.
Look for more changes and improvements soon. We have a lot planned to help make Pick Lists a true resource for shopping research and fun.
Thanks,
Happy Shopping
-David Beach
Good to see the yahoo bringing in the concept of social commerce.