It's Black Friday in the US, and holiday shopping is the hot topic - if you believe The American Marketing Association, MySpace, Facebook and other major social networks are missing out on massive profits this holiday season by neglecting to sell products through their sites. The AMA released a survey today in which 47% of consumers said they'd use social networks to find and discuss holiday gift ideas, while 29% said they would buy products through those sites. 51% said they'd look for discounts on social networks, another 51% said they'd download coupons and 18% said they'd read or write product reviews. Respondents could choose more than one answer, hence the total is more than 100%. The AMA say that we're already seeing a merging of social sites and online stores (the Flickr Camera Finder is a great example), but that blatant hyping of products will turn users off. USA Today got hold of the release yesterday, and speculated that social networks could make more from product sales than they currently do from ads - billions of dollars, they say.
It's also worth noting that social shopping is a growing trend - Crowdstorm, ThisNext, Kaboodle, Wists and Stylehive will almost certainly see a boost this holiday season. Crowdstorm is working on widgets to add to your blog or social networking page, while Kaboodle already has them and ThisNext has created a blog-only widget.
In short: there's a strong sense that shopping and social networks should go together, but it's far from clear how it'll pan out.