Social shopping services are a strange grab-bag of sites all trying to crack the nut of how to monetise social networking around shopping, which is most social when it is real-world, not virtual. In April Wishpot took $1 million Series A for a service that lets you collect and and share information about items you find online and in stores, via texting the site. It competes in the same space as Kaboodle, Stylehive, Yahoo Shoposphere, Zlio and MyPickList.

Now UK-based Skimbit is re-launching as a social booking site for actually making decisions about the stuff you want to buy. In the process it has created a new and subtle way to generate affiliate revenues without bothering the user, selling to them, or using up screen real-estate with terrible ads.

Read the rest of this entry on TechCrunch UK