Pajama Entrepreneur

Stylefeeder.com is the latest personal online shopping site that allows you to bookmark items you like (an iPhone, Gucci shoes, Dior bag), find “style twins” (people who share your taste), get product recommendations specific to your taste and solicit advice from others in the community about items you are thinking of buying. It’s a social network and bookmarking site around shopping that tries to match people’s tastes. Stylefeeder makes money by taking a cut on purchases made via your recommendations.

I signed up for a Stylefeeder account and found it very easy and fun to use. The best way to make use of Stylefeeder is to install a browser plug-in button so that whenever you find an item in an online shop, you can simply add it to your Stylefeeder list.

For example, you go to a store, click on an item, click the Stylefeeder button to add to your Stylefeed. A box pops up that allows you to pick the photo you want associated with the item and to edit any information about it. Click “add” and that’s it. You can also edit to add tags to the item, and add it to any groups that you have joined in the Stylefeeder community.

Stylefeeder is like Kaboodle, the other social shopping site that’s been around for a while and has a larger audience. Kaboodle describes itself as “social shopping community where people discover, recommend and share products. Kaboodle’s powerful shopping tools allow people to organize their shopping through lists, discover new things from people with similar style, get discounts on popular products and find best prices. At the heart of Kaboodle is a fun and engaging community of people who love to shop.”

Both sites encourage users to make lists of favorites, to tag items, create or join groups, make recommendations, rate items, etc. Kaboodle was recently sold to Hearst Magazines. The rumored price is $40 million (Kaboodle raised $5 million in VC funding).

I like Stylefeeder more than Kaboodle because Stylefeeder looks better and is easier to use. It’s less cluttered, more “Web 2.0″. Stylefeeder also lets you place widgets on your blog, website, Friendster and MySpace pages, and it has a Facebook application. But Kaboodle has the advantage in terms of the size of the community so if you are looking to join a group of beauty junkies who have already posted a lot of items, Kaboodle is better . . . for now.

There is such a demand for online sites that do taste search, not just for shopping, but also for travel, entertainment, eating out, and home decor. I expect Stylefeeder to attract a large audience very quickly.

Stylefeeder and Kaboodle founders motivated by similar problem: finding things that match their taste

The similarities between Stylefeeder and Kaboodle extend also to the founders. Both sites were started by couples who had difficulty shopping for things online to decorate their homes. In the case of Stylefeeder, she couldn’t find decent lighting in the US (see http://www.stylefeeder.com/about.html). Kaboodle’s About page says the founders were remodeling their home and couldn’t find products that matched their tastes.

Stylefeeder’s founder goes into his obsession with taste search, finding whom to trust when it comes to restaurant reviews, etc. (http://blog.tech.stylefeeder.com/).