Hanging Out at the e-Mall

Hearst's acquisition of startup Kaboodle marks the latest bid to marry the social aspect of shopping to e-commerce

by Catherine Holahan

As any fashionista knows, shopping is not simply about spending money on the hottest trends. A trip to the mall or downtown fashion district is a chance to gab with friends and opine on everything in every store window: "That bubble skirt seems more fattening than flattering, but the little white dress is definitely the next wardrobe staple. Don't you think?"

A bigger fashion question is whether this sort of banter can become the next trend in online shopping.

On Aug. 8, Hearst Corporation—owner of magazines such as Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire—announced plans to acquire Kaboodle, a Web company that combines social networking with shopping. "For women, shopping is an engaging experience, it is a fun experience," says Manish Chandra, co-founder and chief executive of Kaboodle, who developed the site after redecorating his home with his wife. "What we are trying to do is share that experience."

New Avenues to Shoppers

Kaboodle, purchased for an undisclosed amount, enables users to post pictures and descriptions of items being sold elsewhere on the Web so they can solicit opinions from friends and other members of the Kaboodle community. "I have a 15-year-old daughter who goes to the mall to hang out and buy stuff," says Ken Bronfin, president of Hearst Interactive Media. "Shopping is a social experience for her; she wants to try something on and have three of her friends look at it and say what they think.… All that type of functionality is available on Kaboodle."

Bronfin sees Kaboodle enabling Hearst magazines to build stronger online communities around their editorial content, as well as providing Hearst's fashion industry adverisers with a new way to reach target audiences. Kaboodle has 2.2 million or so unique visitors, most of them from the same style-conscious, female demographic that reads Hearst's fashion magazines. In the future, Bronfin says, an editor at Marie Claire might create a Kaboodle page filled with summer sandals, on which Kaboodle members could comment and post their own footwear finds. Marie Claire would sell shoe-related advertisments beside the entries.

Many e-commerce companies see social-shopping features as the next evolution of online buying: Call it shopping 3.0. First shoppers went to the store. Then they went to that store's Web site or to a search engine to look for a specific item or a type of product. The next phase, the thinking goes, is that they'll log on to discover new items they never realized they wanted, all the while soliciting opinions from friends and like-minded shoppers about what to buy.

A More-Social Social Network

EBay (EBAY) is already pursuing this concept aggressively. For the past year, the online auctioneer has enabled its users to create personal pages, complete with photos, on a section of its site called My World. This year, it revamped those personal pages to enable users to more easily connect with others that share listed interests, from antique jewelry to ethnic instruments and organic clothing. Users can comment or ask questions about what others have purchased, would like to purchase, or are selling on eBay.

"We took the further step of allowing people to interact with each other and carry on conversations through a guestbook," says Dan Burkhart, director of eBay's buyer engagement team. "It allows people to discover things that have existed on the eBay platform, but have never been surfaced in a meaningful way."

Also, eBay recently launched tools enabling users who have pages in social networks to display listed eBay items on those pages, or even shop eBay's listings from within that social network site.