Why is social shopping such a disaster?

No real traction among any of the players in the last year:

Perhaps the core mechanic of the site is broken? People just don’t feel like bookmarking lots of stuff?

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Written by Andrew Chen
June 7th, 2007 at 1:24 am

http://newspeedwayboogie.blogspot.com/ Weissman

Thanks for posting this chart it is quite revealing.

I think the reason is that there is no big problem being solved. Collaborative product recommendation works — a la Amazon, netflix and other sites (and Aggregate Knowledge is also doing great things there).

Socializing is by definition collaborative. Thus, “social networking” takes the offline behavior and amplifies it.

Is shopping social? Maybe some aspects but at its functional level I dont think so because it involves spending money, an inherently personal act.

Which is not to say there is no value, just not enough to see explosive growth.
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That chart is really a disaster.

@andrewchen