Social shopping sites may generate revenue not only from affiliate marketing, advertising and click throughs, but also by sharing information about their users with retailers.
Some sites concentrate on the user interactions that pass on information and recommendations that are hard to acquire from sales personnel.
Many sites offer nothing of specific value in return, relying on the user's intrinsic sense of social reward to share information with the community.
Social shopping can also exist in the real-world beyond the obvious swapping of consumer stories with people one knows.
Others implement the Twitter API, allowing their users to share content through tweets.