Skimbit tries to crack the social shopping model

Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

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

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