Fancy Is A Social Shopping List For The Design-Obsessed

We recently wrote about thingd, the ambitious startup that wants to build a “database of every thing in the world.” The startup, which has raised funding from a group of impressive investors, recently rolled out Fancy, a social shopping/blogging platform to list products.

The idea behind Fancy is fairly simple. Via a bookmarklet, you can flag and import pictures of pretty much anything from other websites into your Fancy profile. You can also download pictures and text into your profile as well. Or you can snap a photo of a favorite product from Fancy’s iPhone app. You can tag photos (i.e. shoes, furniture) to make them searchable on the site.

The social component of Fancy allows you to follow other users whose product and image collections you like. You can save other products listed on users’ profiles to your profile and you can access a feed of new products added by the users you follow. Users can also embed Fancy images on other websites. And the stark design of the site is visually appealing when combined with the images that users add.

Fancy describes itself as “a blog, magazine, wishlist and store catalog rolled into one,” which is pretty accurate. It seems like a a great way to collect, curate and share the things you love through visual images. I think there could also be an opportunity for brands, celebs and designers to use Fancy to publish curated lists of their “favorite things.”