Kaboodle – Personal internet-wide wishlists

Kaboodle.com

How is it that this little gem has gone mostly unnoticed?  It’s filled with young women (because who else dominates the market for “window shopping”?)  It’s the definition of social shopping.  You have to see it to understand why “social shopping” is even logical.

The vast majority of the site is dedicated to shopping on the internet, but it’s not a retail / e-tailer.  The site allows users to create “wishlists”… simple lists of items.  To use it, you:

1. find an item you want somewhere (anywhere) on the internet
2. paste the URL into your Kaboodle wishlist, and
3. (only if Kaboodle doesn’t already have a data-harvesting template for the site you use), you describe the product using data Kaboodle finds on that URL.  No typing and minimal effort.

And the truly great part about it: there’s no cost to anyone except the retailer of each individual item.  Kaboodle has referral accounts with all of the major referral systems.  They make money on helping you get items on your wishlist.

The site is ****ing ingenious… which pisses me off royally.  I came up with the exact same idea independently (and years too late).  I was so vamped about my idea, I spent 3 straight days prototyping the data harvester portion of the system and got it to work (granted, it was rudimentary).

Funny thing is, they are based out of the same town I live in.  Maybe I should knock on their office door and congratulate them on having such a fantastic (sleeper) service.

The only downside I’ve found is that for most sites (which don’t have a (gift|wish)list/registry Web Service, lists on Kaboodle are not updated when someone uses a Kaboodle link to purchase the item for the appropriate Kaboodle user.  It seems as though the purchaser is on the honor system to notify Kaboodle at the right time.