Shoppers are passionate about shopping – sure, shopping itself is a great source of joy for many people, but talking about shopping is just as enjoyable, especially around the holidays.

Last month, the release of Google’s Boutiques.com arrived with a great deal of buzz, and – most likely – a great drop in productivity for shopaholics. But while Boutiques.com is the newest site to combine fashion, search and social media, it is certainly not the first.

The following social shopping sites not only create a community for shoppers who are passionate about fashion, they offer unique marketing opportunities for retailers since some of them rank high in organic search results. With the holidays quickly approaching, these social shopping sites can be key for gaining brand visibility.

Kaboodle is a social shopping community that allows users to recommend and share products, and create lists, outfits and polls. Users can easily share items via Facebook, Twitter or email. For marketers, Kaboodle offers brand profiles and supports sponsored contests. A free “add to Kaboodle” button is available for retailers, who can place the button on their product pages to facilitate sharing. An added search benefit is that Kaboodle product pages often rank on the first page of the organic results for product and brand name searches (for example, Kaboodle ranks #6 in Google for “blue handbag Modcloth,” after Modcloth itself, but before any other sites).

Polyvore shares many features with Kaboodle, notably the ability to share and bookmark items from retail websites. What sets Polyvore apart, however, is the “virtual styling” tool that allows users to create “sets,” graphic collages that help to visualize how outfits will look when styled all together.  Users can interact with other users’ sets and click through to the products themselves directly from the sets. Retailers can leverage the site by sponsoring a giveaway on Polyvore, or even by installing Polyvore’s mini editor, which can be pre-loaded with their own items, on their own site. Unfortunately for search marketers, Polyvore sets rarely show up in organic search results for branded or product searches.

Shopstyle is essentially a fashion search engine with social functionality. While the products featured on Kaboodle and Polyvore are submitted by users, Shopstyle’s search results are made up of items from retail partners that have been accepted by the site’s editors.  A user cannot submit a product to the site; however, he or she can share it via Facebook, Twitter or email, as well as save it to a “look,” which is comparable to one of Polyvore’s sets. Users can “favorite” an item as well as interact with other users in themed groups. Marketers and retailers who are Shopstyle partners can leverage the site by sponsoring contests. Shopstyle performs very well in organic search engine results for unbranded keywords (for example, Shopstyle ranks #1 on Google for the term “blue handbag.”)

Overall, these social shopping websites have a lot to offer to consumers, retailers and search marketers. By leveraging their functionality, it is possible to build brand awareness among fans of online shopping, and to take up additional real estate in the organic results.

Several companies have launched product inventory search to help shoppers get into the holiday spirit this year. This technology helps bridge the gap between the online search and brick-and-mortar retail establishments. The goal is to allow people to search online for product availability at nearby retailers, then make a purchase in-store. This is mutually beneficial for retailers and consumers: consumers can quickly narrow down destinations and comparison-shop for their offline purchases and retailers have an opportunity to increase foot traffic into their stores, and potentially increase sales as well.

In mid-November, Retailigence launched, offering retailers mobile apps and websites with an API that links to their inventory systems. On November 15, Google announced improvements to its Product Search for in-stock availability at the local level (just do a search on Google Shopping and click the nearby stores link for availability at its partnered retailers in your area). Lastly, on November 23, Goodzer launched their local product search engine for New York and its boroughs, starting as a test market, and then expanding domestically and internationally afterwards.

These products are not all the same. Google and Retailigence operate by partnering with big retailers since they require product feeds, which can be cost and time prohibitive for smaller retailers. On the other hand, Goodzer captures retailers of all sizes with its technology that crawls retailers’ sites and matches products to store locations. As long as a retailer has a website, it can be incorporated into Goodzer.

The major trade-off appears to be accuracy vs. cost. The accurate technologies tend to require a high dollar and time investment, limiting its pool of retail partners. Technologies like Goodzer have a lower cost of entry, but tend to lack the precision needed to determine if a product is in a specific store at any given point in time.

So, which technology is better? Intuition says whatever will be the most accurate and user-friendly for shoppers will triumph, but it’s too early in the game to tell what will become a success. As the line between online and offline continue to blur, it will become increasingly important for online marketers and retailers to sync when connecting with their consumers.

A new deal site launched on Tuesday, named Offermatic, which seeks to capitalize on the group-buying craze. The site essentially provides deals from major retailers based on your credit or debit card histories. The user interface combines the best parts Mint and Groupon to automatically reward you for selling your own data or purchasing a coupon. This passive approach to savings takes the Groupon model a step further down every marketer’s purchasing funnel.

Advertisers have been buying user purchase histories for decades. Companies like Cardlytics already use zip code, store name, and store category information from bank statements to retarget your ads. But Offermatic places the power into the consumers’ hands. Transparency actually works in the company’s favor by allowing users to self-identify themselves. I’ve already saved 50% on my next movie ticket through Fandango and 10% off my next Trader Joe’s purchase of $50+. Offermatic also leverages social by rewarding you with points for sharing each deal via Twitter and Facebook. No longer does the customer have to actively seek out deals, Offermatic makes it as if the deals are looking for you!

Local deal sites Groupon and LivingSocial are the bells of the ball this year and are being courted by Google and Amazon, but they don’t have this kind of data to work with. Neither is selling yet, in the hopes the deal craze will continue to sweep the globe and distribute the savings to consumers through multiple touch points. Since November of 2008, Groupon has saved a total of $814,883,217 and sold 18,913,160 coupons, but could reach into the billions if they were to focus on larger retail chains. Groupon has 3,000 employees in 29 countries, half of which are sales people according to Business Insider. Those employees are buying deals from a lot of mom and pop shops when they could be talking more frequently to the Walmarts and Starbucks of the world.

Zuckerberg struck again on Sunday night, making his second career appearance on one of the top-rated news programs in America, 60 Minutes.  Aside from the onslaught of investigative questions from Lesley Stahl, Zuckerberg found time to introduce Facebook’s User Profile Redesign. The new profile format immediately informs visitors of a profile page who that person is, but this change means that users will be encouraged to provide even more data about themselves. Surprised, right?

This article from Josh Costine goes into depth about the Facebook display changes and how they improve the accuracy of Facebook’s growing data set. Marketers use this data set to target Facebook users who are most interested in the product they are advertising. Key to this ever-growing targeting pool is the newly designed Profile Info Summary. The “Summary” is the first thing that catches your eye on a profile page, as it is right beneath your name and above your most recent photos. It provides a quick rundown of your job, your school, your current location, your relationship status, the languages you speak, your hometown, and your birth date. Costine explains, “It’s therefore in Facebook’s interest for users to provide and keep current this information. Prompts for users to enter absent information and the increased visibility of these fields to a user and their friends should ensure this.” Costine goes on to provide further information regarding the User Profile Redesign. However, no aspect of the New Facebook Profile is more important to marketers than the Info Summary, as it will prompt users to reveal more about themselves.

On a side note, the 60 Minutes interview was very entertaining. You should watch it here if you missed it. Zuckerberg seems as composed and confident as ever. He preaches the growing importance of “social” in every decision that an individual makes, from buying groceries to watching television. He answers all questions as honestly as possible… for him. Which leaves the general public with only one question: Who wins in a fight? Andy Rooney or Mark Zuckerberg? Let the argument begin…

In March when Razorfish met with Baidu, in their Beijing headquarters, there were no signs of international growth plans.  In fact, they were reducing staff dedicated to serving foreign advertisers.  This week Bloomberg shared a quote from Baidu’s CEO Robin Li, saying that in ten years he envisions Baidu as a “household name in 50% of the world”.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_47/b4204060242597.htm

Just recently, Baidu enhanced their search results bringing them in line with changes Google made over a year ago.  Baidu is now just starting to incorporate maps and images in their search results.  While their development efforts haven’t caught up to the rich results from Bing and Google, they are moving forward.

Baidu dominates the search share in China by almost 73%.  There are lots of countries beyond the US and Europe where Baidu could give Google a run for the ad money.   Baidu’s challenge outside of China will be to overcome the perception that they do evil.

Aside from being a government supported monopoly, Baidu has to overcome some bad PR to improve this perception.  They have suffered two major PR setbacks in recent years that continue to plague them.  First they were reprimanded for selling ads to unlicensed medical providers and then there were allegations that they suppressed search results the for dairy company responsible for killing children with poisoned milk.

The Bloomberg article does a great job explaining Baidu’s rise from Silicon Valley funded start up to a government backed power house.  While it helps us understand how Baidu rose to the top in China, it doesn’t give any insight on when Baidu will start looking externally for growth.

Today, Baidu’s CEO is back in Silicon Valley speaking at the Web 2.0 conference.  Hopefully Li will reveal more on his international intentions.