3 Startups Bring New Angles to Social Buying

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Each weekend, Mashable selects startups we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.

This week we’ve focused on three startups with innovative takes on social buying.

OpenSky is a Twitter-style personalized shopping site. LikeBids motivates users to distribute coupons for brands, and MyTab helps users fund trips through their social networks.

OpenSky: Twitter for Curated Shopping

Quick Pitch: OpenSky is a shopping site that is curated by the tastemakers that individual users “follow.”

Genius Idea: A customizable online shopping experience.

Mashable’s Take: OpenSky has cleverly blended recommendations, editorial endorsements and flash sales.

When users sign up, they can chose from a list of about 60 tastemakers to “follow,” including celebrities such as Molly Sims, Padma Lakshmi, Kristin Cavallari, Bobby Flay and Tom Colicchio. Each tastemaker chooses products to recommend to followers and writes a short explanation of why each item was chosen. He or she runs a special on about one item a week that gives followers a 20% to 60% discount on the item.

Since launching in April, OpenSky says that it has grown 50% month over month. The site has about 600,000 users, and its CEO John Caplan, the former president of About.com, seems to be thinking big.

The startup announced a $30 million round of funding this week, bringing its total amount to $49 million.

LikeBids: Group Buying Unlocked by Facebook “Likes”

Quick Pitch: LikeBids distributes coupons through Facebook.

Genius Idea: A built-in motivation for word-of-mouth marketing.

Mashable’s Take: LikeBids users win coupons by Liking them and encouraging others to do so. When a threshold number of Likes are reached, a coupon is emailed to everyone who clicked.

The advantage of distributing coupons this way is that even participants who aren’t particularly excited to spread the word about a discount end up doing so anyway. When they Like the coupon, it’s automatically posted on their wall and friends’ feeds.

LikeBids has also built in a motivation for users who are excited to spread the word. Each coupon has a price attached to it for the person who motivates the most people to Like it by sharing a unique URL.

Right now LikeBids’ offerings are pretty sparse (there are exactly three coupons available: Papa John’s, Kohl’s and Sephora), but the startup has set up a situation that encourages users to promote brands to their friends. If those users indeed appear, that’s an appealing proposition.

myTab: a Social Travel Gift Card

Quick Pitch: myTab aims to make group gifting travel easier.

Genius Idea: A travel search engine that automatically takes into account your budget.

Mashable’s Take: Let’s say you want to go on a trip and it’s your birthday. MyTab hopes you’ll set up an account on its site, and share a link that allows your friends to chip in to its cost by purchasing a virtual currency it refers to as “myCash.”

You can then use a Kayak-like interface to book a flight and hotel based on how much “myCash” you have. If there are leftovers, you can re-gift them to friends.

Although we understand where myTab is coming from — group gift buying is a problem pervasive enough that several startups (and eBay) have developed solutions that make it easier. We fear, however, that this travel-focused solution only makes the process more complicated.

Image courtesy of istockphoto, barisonal

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

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