Your holiday shopping days are quickly winding down… And the gift scramble is on!  We’ve done the leg work for you and selected some awesome gifts priced under $25! Check out our team’s picks to make your holiday shopping easy and affordable. Finish crossing off your shopping list!

We thank you kindly for all our nominations! Shopit has officially made it into the voting round of Mashable’s Open Web Awards, nominated as the Best Social Shopping Site in 08′!

Now we need your help: Enter your email address and click Vote Now. You can vote for us once per day. Thank you in advance for all your Shopit support! It means a lot to us

Congratulations to Matt Bordey our lead web designer here at Shopit, and his wife Daisy, on their new baby boy! Born on November 14th, please welcome… Noah Nicolai Bordey.

We’re up for nomination in Mashable’s Open Web Awards; an open, international contest for the best websites and services. Our category of course is ‘Favorite Social Shopping Site.’ We’d be honored to have your nomination! You can enter your submission below. Thanks for all your continued feedback and support this past year. We couldn’t be more excited about 09′!

A couple of months ago Facebook launched a new version of their site. To keep up with the changes, we updated our Facebook Shopit Application. Since then, many of our users have been a tiny bit confused about how things work with the new Facebook. So here are a couple tips for all of you to hopefully get a better grip on what you can do with Shopit on the new Facebook.

The Facebook Publisher enables you to publish content— such as photos, links, and videos—directly to your Wall. In Shopit terms, the newest items you’re selling on Shopit, latest sales, new product commercials, and so on. You can add content to your own profile or to a friends’!

The Tabbed Profile is the new display of your profile. Now you’re in control of the information you want your friends to see. You can add your Shopit store to the new Boxes, Info, and Wall Tabs.
The Boxes Tab is where the majority of the applications you add to your Facebook will show up. Initially, this is where your Shopit store will display once added.
The Info Tab shows information about you that doesn’t change frequently. Include your Shopit store directly to your Info Tab, so it will always display on your profile.
The Wall Tab displays information both by you (that you publish) and about you (that others publish). Add your Shopit store to display your products for all your potential buyers to see. Keep your wall updated with your hottest items and best deals.

If your Shopit Store isn’t showing up on your profile, there’s an easy answer. Under your application settings, click “edit” next to the Shopit Application. A small dialog box will appear with three tabs. Click the “Profile” tab and make sure it says “Box: Added”. If it says “Box: Available” then be sure to click “Add” so that your Shopit store appears on your profile.  That’s it!

One more tip: Once you’ve added the application to your profile, it doesn’t automatically show up on your Wall Tab. Where it does show up? In your Boxes Tab. If you go there, and click on the little pencil looking icon you will see a menu pop up, giving you the option to move it to your Wall Tab.

We hope this helps! Please message us if you have any more questions.

-Guy

The Shopit Intern

That’s right… We’re pleased to announce that the Shopit Store application is now available to all 500,000 of Ning’s social networks. Haven’t heard of Ning? They are behind the scenes of this white-label social network platform, providing the functionality for users to create and customize their own social networks. Giving users the freedom to build any type of social network has lead to a profound and diverse range of new online communities.

Musicians like 50Cent and T.I. have jumped on board creating their own social networks, ThisIs50 and T.I. community. Mom’s across the world are joining networks created just for them; like Navy Moms and Twitter Moms. From athletes, bloggers, video channels, journalists, students, educators, parents, craft hobbyists, alumni, and interest groups, any user is sure to find a place that’s just for them. If not, then create one; it can be about anything your little heart desires.

Commerce enabling these communities means buying and selling without ever have to leave the page. Talk about convenience! Maybe you’re a member of the Cute Dog Clothes social network? Sell your bling collars to buyers right from your profile page. Chatting with fellow sneakers addicts about the latest kicks? Sell Nike’s new AirMax to your friends with a click of a button. The possibilities are endless.

We’re excited to be a part of Ning’s OpenSocial applications. And we couldn’t have done it, or done it so well :), without the help of the diligent Ning team! Shout-outs to Jinen Kamdar, Will Jelliffe, Ernie Hsiung, Kyle Ford. Thanks for your help guys!

The Shopit application that has become so popular with Facebook and MySpace is now available on the hi5 networks. I am a computer science student at the University of California, Los Angeles interning at Shopit and have been working over the past several weeks to bring this application to a true OpenSocial environment. OpenSocial initially had some stumbles but has now shown that it is capable of hosting robust and unique application experiences with easy portability.
The application provides users with a dashboard to view all the current incoming or outgoing orders, see the latest products, add or remove products, and even make purchases from start to finish all from within the hi5 network. This combination offers both a easy and friendly interface as well as a viral market for both buyers and sellers.
The biggest feature of any social application is sharing and with the Shopit application it is as easy as clicking share, selecting your friends, and watching your business spread. You can just as easily let your friends know when you’ve found a great deal. Save money on the products you need just by watching your notifications in hi5.
As an intern in a continuing learning experience I have found the development and testing of this application to be exciting. I was able to watch the power of the sharing features grow as I built them beneath my fingertips. The hi5 API is becoming more and more complete ever day as it moves towards OpenSocial 0.8 and a more finalized REST interface. Although I’m still awaiting a PHP client library.
Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys the application and finds those great deals. I will be heading off to explore Europe in my first backpacking experience next week. Thanks for your interest in my efforts. I’d also like to give a big thanks to Sameer and Eric, and the rest of the hi5 team for their continued help.

-Matt Snider

Ghosts and ghouls and all things scary have just a couple weeks left to perfect their costumes, pimp their graveyards, and craft their brews. So make sure you’ve got all your spooky garb, sweet stuff and eerie furnishings listed on Shopit. Get creative! You never know who’ll want to wear your homemade hamburger costume this year. And be sure to add keywords to help buyers find your items quick and easy, like ‘Halloween, Costume, Giant Hamburger’ And if you’re shopping for some last minute stuff, you can’t go wrong with the Shopit Halloween stores. Here are few with ideas for this holidays’ shopping:

I’m enthused about a recent article from MarketTools; Aug./Sept. 2008 Insight Report Reveals Impact of Web Activity on Consumers’ Purchasing Decisions. It highlighted the fact that consumers visit online blogs, communities, or social networks and engage in product research online to help make purchase decisions. This research and these statistics support our vision on the direction e-commerce is heading in this marketplace. Enter Shopit; the platform for social commerce. Great knowing that we are right where we should be.

Your actions have spoken and were listening! Based on what our community has been requesting, we’re adding a ton of new features and a brand new look for Shopit! Also, in an effort to simplify the site, we’ll be doing away with some features that are not frequently used by our community. So we have removed the option to list items for ‘trade’ on Shopit. You can simply list them for sale or accept offers on them.

We thank you again for your continued feedback to help us improve Shopit. We’re working hard to ensure we give attention to all of your requests. Keep em’ coming!