[Found through News.com]

eBay has partnered with Kaboodle to showcase community collections through a site called MyCollectibles. Not a ton of collections on the site yet (doesn’t officially launch until Monday), but this seems like a smart move by both companies: Kaboodle gets exposure to a ton of loyal eBay users and eBay gets a great distribution venue for its targeted auction listings.

eBay ads currently show up on the right hand side of each collection. While the ads don’t seem very targeted yet, this will obviously change in the future.

Mike Arrington from TechCruch has more.

Back in November when I first talked to Kaboodle, I said the company has the potential to ‘cross the chasm’ much sooner than sites like del.icio.us (purchased by Yahoo! in December ‘05) because it is just simpler to use and adds more value to any decision making process. However, the social functionality the company added in February scared me off a little as I thought the updates had taken away from the core functionality and therefore the core value of the site. At the same time, a slew of competitors in the social space popped up (Plum, Jeteye, Stylehive, etc.).

While I understand and respect the value of Kaboodle, I’m not an avid user. The only social service that’s starting to grow on me is Yahoo’s MyWeb, which ironically has deli.cio.us functionality built into it.

The ability to collect and share everything through one page is extremely valuable, but I’m just not convinced that the average Joe internet user will adopt a service like Kaboodle. Which makes this deal with eBay so important. While the average Joe internet user might not depend on Kaboodle, the service fits in perfectly with the uber-loyal and active eBay community.

So how does this relate to shopping comparison engines? It’s just part of the ecommerce ecosystem that we should be paying attention to. Someone is going to figure out how to effectively bring the social aspect of offline shopping to the online world as this functionality has the potential to attract more browsers (friends, friends of friends, etc.) and turn browsers into buyers. It could be Kaboodle.

Just don’t expect me to be able to pick out a winner…

Related Posts
Kaboodle Blog Announcement - June 10, 2006
Gary Price’s Take - June 10, 2006
Kaboodle - Social Shopping - November 13, 2005
Searching the Shoposphere - November 23, 2005
Community, Personalization, and Search - November 15, 2005