Keeping with this weeks evolving theme of niche social networking sites comes Trendmill, a social networking destination for lovers of clothes.
Trendmill allows users to upload images of their own clothes or clothes they wish they owned. Members are able to “tip people off” on what they think is hot, vote on other people’s clothes and collaboratively “give a general sense of what the next big trend in fashion is going to be”.
Trendmill also provides the usual features expected from a social networking site, including messaging, publishing articles (blogging) and connecting with friends (”entourage”).
TrendMill competes in the same space as StyleDiary, ShareYourLook and ShoutFit (see our December review of all 3). Unlike some competitors, TrendMill is strictly a social networking play and it shows through a stylish interface and a haute couture of user sites. Clothes may make the man but they won’t on many reading this, so it is a site that’s not for everyone. However if you take your Versace and YSL seriously, you will probably like Trendmill.
The verticles in the social networks are really booming. They will need to offer features that will pull people together and give them a reason to be a part of the community. Merchants will flock to these for both advertising and membership as long as the customers are there and participating. I would bet the average online shop could generate a ton of good will with helping and growing these communities.
superficial fashion *yawn*
The more established network in this space is IQONS (http://www.iqons.com) though they are more industry focused than object/shopping focused
This site is not only useful for consumers, but retailers and wholesalers too.
You can get a million dollars worth of valuable information about fashion trends and attitudes, helpful for store and window displays and advertising.
What a perfect website for superficial brainless consumer retards.
C’mon, are you serious with this. Duncan, I have a great ite for you that i’ll emal you within two weeks. Kills this crap. Talk about specififying too much of a niche with people who really just dont give a fuck.
-1daysports.com
C’mon, are you serious with this. Duncan, I have a great ite for you that i’ll emal you within two weeks. Kills this crap. Talk about specififying too much of a niche with people who really just dont give a shit
-1daysports.com
@ wino
These “brainless consumer retards” spend money. That means you can monetize them. “Brainy non-consumer geeks” like you don’t spend money on anything other than ramen noodles, porn, and hardware. On top of that, you’re impossible to market to. You make a very low value social network member from a business stand point.
Be happy these “brainless consumer retards” exist. Otherwise, the entire Web 2.0 crowd would be out of business.
I see great potential for this site.
Every site out there does not have to be about geeks and digging cool links.
I think as Duncan rightly says, this site is not for everyone and its meant for a specific market who like their clothes and things to do with that.
I also think they have designed the site well for what it offers which is good.
My girlfriend is very much into fashion, and is even a bit tech-savvy.
Unfortunately, she wouldn’t bother with this. She’s too busy shopping, and scoping out the real world for trends.
i think everyone is too busy for this. Butiku.com is coming soon its going to eat this site, Less complicated and focused what people want: shopping, reviews, directories and iphone navigation.
Emailme if you have questions: jason@1daysports.com
Why do you choose women web 2.0 product at midnight?
So, I can I understand you.
It is time now for niche social networks.
first bakespace, now this fashion site…lol…are you covering these stories just to cover a wider demographic or are these some hobbies of yours?
one begs to question if duncan might be a metrosexual or gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that) – just wondering
jason,
please stop spamming . thank you
@ YM Ousley
I’d suggest Fashionising http://www.fashionising.com over IQONS, looking over the (sometimes accurate) Alexa, which is coupling both the industry and consumer needs into the platform.
This website will Seriously impact the future we see in clothing styles of beyond imagination with out the $$$ events to attend. IF you know what I mean
trendy concept.
httyp://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com
Everyone hold on to their hats, because my Sock Puppet social network is coming out in a few months. It’s going to be hotter than MySpace!
will,
stop telling people to stop spamming, weather its the other jason or this jason or the thousands of other people who spam on here, STOP SINGLING OUT PEOPLE!!
Not especially my kind of site, but from the screenshot it looks like it’s 50% ads. Ugh.
The design here is great. The execution is meh. If a fashion site is going to grab my attention, please let it be fashionable… it shouldn’t look like every other tech blog out there. Ugg.
I’m a retard… I meant to say the “idea” here is great (not the design — the design is boring).
Another cool new player in this genre is Fashmatch (http://www.fashmatch.com)
Is this by any chance owned by that “geosign” web portfolio company that just builds sites in verticals than hires 1 writer and a seo – to make it top 10 then sells ads?
– cause if so – please ban them from TechCrunch -
@ #20 Ryan – I think you stated it better than I could have. The larger the proliferation of super niche social networking sites, the harder they will all fall when the consumer public gets confused, bored, and moves on to the next big thing. What’s next?
Though if Ryan starts the sock puppet site, I’m SO there.
I think the idea is great. The site has a nice look to it, my only concern would be the strong shopping integration. I would personally prefer to see more editorial going on here. Kind of like the “Style Guy” section of GQ where you get advise, the latest trends etc.
Editorial sounds better actually. I live for fashion myself, but I don’t think I can even find the time for this unless there was some profoundly unique feature on it. I might give it a try, just to get a feel of it, but who knows what happens in a few weeks.
Sock puppets — now that sounds more interesting.
Duncan thanks for the shout out. I founded and own stylediary
I like this site, but I think recreating the same concepts over and over in any niche is foolish and there are a lot of people doing the same thing with this concept (we were the first so we’re exempt, hehe). I think there have been six start ups along this line in the past year. Judging from the numbers some of the newer sites have, I’m not sure if I would have gone the route of creating a fashion social network at this point. Our site is three years old, whole other market, whole other time.
The social shopping sites present an interesting switch and there are many also crowding this same market. Luckily, the traditional fashion media isn’t very active.
It’ll be interesting to see how things play out.
Iqons is a great site, but I wouldn’t say it’s the most established in the space. It is pretty respected though.
Site looks great. I would say it’s a little heavy on the graphics, but overall it’s very trendy.
Jay in the first life: That’s funny, you seem to think you know everything about me and my spending habits. It also seems that most of the time you post on techcrunch you know everything about under the sun about whatever business is being discussed at the moment. You might want to back off a notch on the know-it-all factor. Other than that, I enjoy your posts.
In the 90´s every dotcommer thinked about desintermediation. May be it´s time to make it real. May trendmill business plan include this topic in some way.
I thought this article is about a new social networking / fashion site, not really about the validity of either. Hence it’s a bit goofy when people post/rant about whether they deem a site like that a waste of time (aka Lawrence’s post “Superficial Fashion *yawn*” … sweetly redundant, and clearly worth HIS time).
Anyway — http://www.thisnext.com/ seems pretty nifty, I pass it along in the context of other related sites that have been listed here. Pretty slick all around.
Further, Glam.com is valued at about $500m, as rumors have it. As I understand it, the business is based entirely on a peppy ad-serving model that rivals what their network of blogs can get from GoogleAds.
All I’m saying is that there’s some quantifiable loot behind this noise.
@ darko, this next hasn’t really had very viral presence that I have seen, and I watch that niche pretty closely and have for years. I think we even wrote about it, but I haven’t seen much since.
You might want to read up on Glam. Their sales numbers were just leaked, lots of people talking about how short they are from where they’re valued.
There’s money to be made in this niche, but it’s not where people think.
I’m biased given my site is a content site but I think that the majority of women don’t have the time to participate in social shopping. Our audiences likes to discuss what’s cool, where to find something etc, but there’s no time for busy women (with jobs and salaries!) to spend posting the inventory of their closets.
We’ve done some cross-promotions with social shopping sites and the response has been underwhelming when compared to cross-promotion with an editorial site or even a retail site.
Given that we get so few referrals from social shopping (sites who kick our butts on alexa rankings so you’d think they’d have more opportunities to send people our way) — I have to wonder if it’s not the same 5 people (or same 50 fashion bloggers) posting over and over again. Social shopping narcissism if you will.
I have no data – just guessing based on my own experience. Personally I spend no time on those sites, but then again I don’t understand the appeal of Second Life for anyone older than 18 either….
@ Michelle, I’m not sure I agree – lots of women I know love Kaboodle’s toolbar feature that allows you to save items you like to your home page (I actually use it all the time), and StyleDiary’s pretty good proof that women aren’t too busy to involve themselves in the extra steps of social media. We’ve got a pretty big member base and the majority of women on our site are 18-35, so they’re busy – school, jobs, kids, etc. Studies show that women are the most interactive online – maybe because we’re such good multi-taskers
I think where I’m seeing the traction with the social shopping sites are among the retailers, because they’re spending money on them, and their growth numbers are pretty good – I don’t know them, but I was just on a panel in Boston with Stylehive and know Kaboodle well and both are growing pretty quickly based on the data they share. I know Kaboodle uses comscore, so it’s not like Alexa numbers (which are notoriously said to be flawed, etc.)
@ michelle & patricia
Regarding the contrasts between editorial vs. social shopping and in general fashion oriented user generated content:
It seems to me that editorial centric sites miss out on the interaction of ‘power users’ and the user generated content that they leave at the ‘social’ sites where they interact and express themselves. What I mean by this is that ‘power users’ may be dissatisfied with the limited experience of simply reading articles and commenting on them. They want to be protagonists; they want an outlet where they can express themselves. On the other hand, some ‘social’ sites may have a harder time pleasing the wider audience of individuals who are generally interested in fashion (or any subject for that matter) but are not fashion obsessed or particularly tech savvy. That might be the reason why some of these so called ‘social’ sites aren’t so big (as michelle suspects) yet have so many items/photos/matches/questions uploaded at their sites. Having said that, ‘social’ sites also bet on the idea that they generated a sort of ‘long tail’ fashion content and advice for a wider audience. Still, the audience of some of those sites may not be receiving this ‘long tail’ content in the format they want to get it
…just my two cents : – )
It’s a really interesting argument between social functions and editorial content… and I tend to think Jon is right.
We’ve built a lot of features into Fashionising – http://www.fashionising.com – that cover both aspects – e.g. any topic can be discussed in the forums to allow for wider lifestyle interests, whereas editorial content via our blog – http://www.fash....com/lifestyle/ – is, for the most part, fashion related.
We also decided that opening up pretty much all areas to user contribution would be a good way to cater for both the basic users (as readers) and ‘power users’ as Jon calls them, who have the time and know-how to participate in a deeper way if they choose to. For example, contributing photos and videos to our Fashion Diary or writing an article for Fashionising’s blog. So far this has worked really well. We’re also working on a number of new user contributed areas, including a fashion trends section which we’ll be launching over the coming week. It’s built to allow people to encounter new fashion, while requiring them to engage in a similar way to Digg (users can browse, vote, all the way up to power users who can contribute unique content).
It’s just about each site finding it’s own focus and balance.
If we’re talking about monetization here. I don’t think many people have it on the spot just yet. Why is MySpace so popular? It is popular among individuals 16-30! These are the people who spend the most! People who shop high fashion are the ones that don’t appear to be the ones surfing the web. You want to appeal to teenagers, young adults, and the sub-30 range and the labels they wear. Trendmill just doesn’t do it for me. I’m 23 years old and just graduated from college. I love popular brands that include A&F, Hollister as well as urban brands like Ecko, Rocawear, Sean Jean, LRG, Artful Dodger, Bape. People relate more to everyday people wearing everyday clothes. When people think fashion, they think high fashion. While I flip through GQ and some of these other mags, I don’t really purchase anything related to what they talk about in there. High fashion is tailored for the established or normally 26+ age group imo. If these sites could relate more to everyday people instead of the purely fashion-minded, then I believe that’s where monetization begins. But hey, I could be wrong, but you can’t help but consider my points.
C.Heat — it’d be nifty if it was that cut & dry. The numbers show that online apparel is not at all restricted to the sub-30 set. 10 years ago the notion was that you could only sell accessories online, that sized-clothing wouldn’t work. The average order value continues to rise. Savvy “high fashion” shoppers are buying items they know and trust online, brand/boutique sites become a concierge service to that customer (stores actually use these sites too, to help service their clients). If you mix the trust there with the expertise of a stylist, the industry knowledge of an Editor, and some elements of social shopping, you may have a winning combination. I think that’s why this thread got so interesting
Patricia — I agree re ThisNext, haven’t heard a peep out of them, I was just saying I like em for their interface/UX. Interesting that it didn’t take hold. Maybe it will? Their emails are clever! Their thin attempts at “content” could get more robust? Oh and of course Glam is overvalued, I was illustrating that there’s $$ in this game, which comes with it’s own set of bubbles and leaks and noise and hubub.
Oh and Kaboodle brought to market an idea I was frikkin working on. Kudos and damnit!
C. Heat, I think you said it best…
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