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Yesterday, The Fancy— which is basically a shoppable Pinterest—rolled out a "Buy Now" button that independent bloggers can add to their sites, TechCrunch reports. The button allows readers to purchase featured products without leaving the page. In exchange, the blogger gets 2% of the purchase price added to their Fancy account 30 days after shipping.
For launch, The Fancy partnered with the Independent Fashion Bloggers network, which represents around 40,000 writers. Most of those are "baby bloggers"—style bloggers who have small readerships and are blogging as a hobby. IFB Editor Taylor Davies told TechCrunch she thinks the button could end up being “the next step in how we, as blog consumers, shop and purchase things we like and see.”
Making products shoppable is also how The Fancy is going to compete with Pinterest, if that's even possible at this point. “Many people say they do social shopping, but nobody does it as extensively as we do,” CEO Joe Einhorn told TechCrunch.
Pinterest claims not to care, though. TechCrunch cites a recent interview in which Pinterest backer Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten, pouted to Forbes: “There are so many copycats of Pinterest already who are focusing just on shopping but they are not getting as much attraction as Pinterest because they are too commercial.”
Commercializing hasn't seemed to hurt Facebook, any, however. Let the battle of the boards begin.
· The Fancy’s E-Commerce Expansion Continues With Launch Of “Buy” Button For Web Publishers [TechCrunch]
· The Age of the Blogazine Is Upon Us: Style Blogs Now Aspire To Be "Part Jezebel, Part Vogue" [Racked]