Dig Up Deals With Snoopr

This shopping holiday season is a time when new shopping sites start popping up everywhere. How do you tell the good from the bad? We already reviewed a product review / shopping site that fell short of the mark, so we were happy to see Snoopr pop up on our radar.

According to the creators of Snoopr, this is the second generation of their site. They added several new features in a bid to become a stronger social shopping site and make the experience more useful and interesting. I'd have to say their improvements worked.

What is Snoopr, exactly? Picture a mixture of social networking, deal finding, shopping, rating, showing off and talking about your shopping. It's FaceBook, Epinions, Amazon and Digg all rolled into one.

I have to say I really enjoy playing around on Snoopr. This is a beta launch that seems to have done every thing right. It hits the motherlode of Web 2.0 launch talking points: focused niche, nice to look at, monochromatic, fast loading, easy to use, useful, and social.

The first thing working in Snoopr's favor when using the site is that it is chock full of deals and steals. There is no shortage of items to see, covering a variety of categories from technology to food. You can view the deals according to their rating on Snoopr (the Snoop Score) or according to freshness.

When you click on any deal in the list, you are presented with its rating, a photo of the product and description, the percentage off being offered, a link to the deal itself, and a way to rate the deal and to add it to your "Trophy Case" showing you purchased the deal.

The Trophy Case makes looking for, and finding, deals a little more fun. The ability to see the Trophies of others also helps you find like-minded shoppers to talk about your deals and steals with. As you find like-minded shoppers, you can add them to your friends. You can also invite people you know to Snoopr to shop with you.

The feature that sets Snoopr apart from its competitors in this niche is "audience participation". Any user can add any deal or steal they find online. Then other users rate the deal by giving it Snoop points.

Only deals validated by other users make it to the front page of the categories. This puts the users in control of the shopping experience. Even as you hunt for deals you can rate them on the fly, keeping the list of deals and steals an ever changing reflection of what the Snoopr users dub relevant.

Overall, Snoopr gets high marks from me for an all around solid beta release. They have created a site where users can participate in a group deal hunting experience and be social, and done it well.

They have done a good job of keeping the social aspect tightly associated with the users and the deals – no mucking about with separate forums or needing to spend a lot of time learning how to use the site. I'll definitely be going back.