• The Wall Street Journal , Thursday, June 7, 2007 10:45 AM

Shopping social networks have become increasingly important in helping shoppers make decisions, and retailers are catching on. Indeed, stores and designers are launching pages and making product pitches on Shopbop, Shopstyle.com and Stylehive.com, which are serious drivers of sales.

Department store giant Nordstrom's, Gap and boutique shops such as Lisa Kline and Ron Herman are all offering their catalog of wares on interactive pages at these sites. H&M, the popular discount clothier, this week partnered with the life-simulation game The Sims to create a store selling virtual replicas of real-world clothes. Users can purchase and wear on the runway in fashion shows to be staged on Yahoo. In Second Life, another virtual world, Christian Dior and Sears have also launched virtual stores.

Whatever you think of the potential effectiveness of some of these moves, the increased commercialization of shopping through social media marks, according to the newspaper, "the beginning of the end of truly independent online conversations about fashion." A viral phenomenon, it makes sense that shopaholics should turn to the Web to find the latest fashions.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »