Motivated by Jason Calacanis’ posting and the NY Times article today, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch posted his own opinion piece about ThisNext and the “social shopping” space.   He paid us some lovely kudos…

 “The site is the best I’ve seen so far, with clearly structured items and very easy ways for users to add their own opinion via comments, tagging, comment ratings and adding things to a wishlist. There are easy to find “buy” links if you want to purchase the item. Users can also create a website widget to show off the stuff they really like. Good stuff, well executed.”

…and raised some interesting points:

“…[CNET] simply review[s] products and put their reviews up on the site. They do not show how certain products become hot over time, and what people are good at picking winners.

This type of thing might find a niche - it won’t displace blogs that are dedicated to talking about the newest and greatest products in a given space, and they won’t displace the big review sites like CNET for people who want to find reviews on a product they already know about. But perhaps they can serve people who want to be a part of a community that decides what products are hot and which are not.”

 Where does ThisNext fit in your digital life? And how does it work for you amongst the CNET’s of the world? Do you think This Next is just a community of people deciding what’s “hot or not?”

 My next post is going to address one particular point I’ve observed in the comment sections of blogs discussing the business side of things.

 Cheers.