The study, from Oneupweb, compared holiday traffic trends over the last two years at the top-ranking e-tailers, social sites and review sites against the latest user trends, and found that while search engines have typically been the leading driver to retail sites, "social media is influencing search behavior and affecting the purchases a consumer makes."

"We found that traffic to social sites steadily gained on retail sites in 2007 and 2008," it says. Despite a holiday bump, direct traffic to online retail sites fell 10%, behind traffic to social sites, which grew 12% from December 2007 to December of last year. "Traffic to the review sites remained stagnant throughout the year, experiencing a mild bump during the holiday season," the report says.

What's happening, according to the Traverse City, Mich.-based research company, is that consumers are much more engaged in talking about products and deals in the social world. Facebook -- with active users now averaging about 15 hours on the site per week -- contributes more than 3% of all traffic to the top retail sites online, it says, and as many as 25% of social network users post links to other companies, products or services. The report also cites a Penn State study, which found that one in five tweets mention a specific brand or services.

Last year, e-commerce drew in $25.5 billion dollars, a 3% decline, while online traffic grew 10%.

Meanwhile, a separate study from the Luxury Institute reports that wealthy consumers are also warming to shopping via social networks. The study, which looked at 400 people with an average income of $415,000 and household net worth of $4.9 million, found that nearly one in five social networkers in this group also belong to a social shopping site, with Ideeli and Rue LaLa the most popular. And while 13% have joined a group that is based around a product, service or a brand, 24% say they would be likely to do so. The Luxury Institute also found these high-net-worth individuals have an above-average participation rates: Membership in social networking sites has increased from 60% in early 2008 to 72%, with 62% of those in the 55-plus age group participating.

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