Etsy Launches Social Shopping Features

Etsy launched new social-shopping features this week called Circles and Activity Feeds. Registered users can monitor the activity of other users that they "know and admire" through the activity feed.

With the popularity of social networking sites, there is growing pressure for retailers, marketplaces and even shopping engines to add social components to their sites, whether by integrating with sites such as Facebook or launching standalone features. This week, Microsoft's Bing Shopping added the ability for searchers to publish a wish-list to their Facebook Wall, for example.

With Etsy's new feature, shoppers can get an immediate snapshot of newly listed items from their favorite shops or new treasury lists from people whose style they admire. Sellers can see recent sales and who is "favoriting" their items.

Etsy users click the "Add to Circle" button on any member profile to add them to their circle, and from another user's profile, can click through to see that person's circle. "This is a fun way to see if your circles overlap or to see if there are others you might like to follow," Etsy explained. Users can manage their activity through their privacy settings.