Social Shopping Week – Shopcasting with This Next

Today’s Social Shopping Network is This Next, a network devoted to shopcasting! This Next was my first introduction into social shopping. I stumbled across it on a search for something (can’t remember what) and spent a bit of time checking out different products, but hadn’t taken the time to sign up.

This Next fits the more standard model of social shopping, where every single product in the network has been added because a member of the network liked it. This gives it a much broader product base that Shop Style, not only in sheer volume of products but also in the type of products. Want a pink rubber duck or a bed frame that made of iron that mimics trees? You’re more likely to find it on This Next that Shop Style.

With This Next, when you discover a product you like, you recommend it on the network . The Network consists of items and lists, items being the individually recommended items with tags (so for example, a pair of Marc Jacobs shoes might be tagged as Marc Jacobs, Shoes, Fashion, Style, Red) and lists being a collection of items that you like, or want to group together.

This Next also promotes Shopcasting, which is essentially sharing your finds with the world through widgets on your blog or website.

So I did my search for Joes Jeans. This produced 11 items and 35 lists. Of the 11 items, one was the opportunity to speak with a denim expert, 3 were for a website called jeans.com and the rest were actually Joes Jeans. This really to me is the key difference between Shop Style and This Next – This Next is about a greater range of products rather than clothing. Where I think This Next really comes into its own is in finding unique products that you wouldn’t neccesarily come across every day. There is still a huge amount of fashion and accessories but I kept finding myself drawn towards the more unsual items

To view and item you just click on the item and are taken to the product page. The product page shows you where you can buy the item but didn’t give me any further details about the product - for this I would have to click through to the store.

Now when you find something you want to purchase, there were two interesting points when heading to the store. Firstly, This Next opens the store in the existing browser unless you specifically tell it not you. This bugs me. If I choose to take a look around the store and then want to return to this next, it’s a lot of back button pressing and annoyance on my part.

Secondly, This Next doesn’t show you the product prices, and it doesn’t show if the item is in stock. When I clicked through to eluxury, the jeans were on sale, but were sold out. This is actually pretty logical when you consider that unlike Shop Style, This Next is not linked in to the store’s product’s so it would be impossible to pull this information from all the different stores that make it onto This Next. This however, also means that via This Next you are more likely to discover new stores that you haven’t yet discovered.

It’s very straightforward to add products you find to your wishlist, and the recommend option allows you to further recommend an item (the idea being that the more people that recommend it, the more buzz about the product) and there is a nifty option to create a sticker which shows up on the product, where you actually type in what you want the sticker to say (I’m such a sucker for stuff like this, you can see my recommendation with my sticker to the right)

In your account you can see all your recommendations you’ve made and also sort them into lists. There doesn’t seem to be a feature to ‘follow’ members with similiar interests however.

The latest feature on This Next is the Activity Map. Click on it and it brings up a map of the world which starts scrolling around and shows you what different members of the network around the world are viewing. It looks nifty, but I’m not sure how useful I find it!

Overall, I would most likely use This Next either to find unusual gifts or when I specifically felt uninspired by all my usual stores. It also wouldn’t be my first choice for searching out new fashions, I think Shop Style does that much better, but This Next does beat Shop Style hands down for unique products and the range of products on offer.