David Beisel writes:
Social shopping is about sharing the act of shopping itself with others, and I view it as a subset of social commerce as a whole. Just as some people enjoy shopping with others in the real world, some will enjoy doing it virtually within a social network. Nearly all of these players have promoted a meme of three activities which people can do collectively: discover/find, collect/organize, and promote/share/connect/recommend/publish. It is these three acts which compose the endeavor of shopping together with others.
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An element of social input in online shopping services augments the experience, even if it isnt central to it. There are numerous opportunities to add a layer of social features to an existing set of commerce functionality or to new services which arent primarily social.