E-tailers can do things online that are just not possible in traditional offline merchandising. While you might go to a store with a friend and get their advice on the spot, in the online realm you can tap into written thoughts, reviews and decisions from many of whose advice you trust. Ok. We’re talking about the value of social shopping or social commerce…and it seems all the buzz in the social worlds these days.

Let’s talk about how it can benefit both you and how it has risen to the forefront of e-commerce discussions.

So what is “social shopping” or those in the industry call “social commerce?” Well, it involves the use of social media, in the context of e-commerce, all mashed together in a platform to assist with buying and selling online. In simple words, it’s the crossroads where online conversations (social) and where you purchase meet. It likely includes online features like customer ratings and reviews, polls, user recommendations and methods to share among online communities.

While social commerce has existed in some fashion for some time now, with brands like Dell claiming to have made $6.5m from computer sales via Twitter since as early as 2007, social commerce has become a major point of strategic discussion for online retailers recently because of two big reasons:

1. Facebook. It’s where customers are and going regularly. It’s where they engage with their social circles for entertainment, insight, and yes, even inspiration. Facebook now boasts 500 million active worldwide users (150 million in the U.S.), and 56% of online shoppers use Facebook.

2. Products are being discussed on Facebook knowingly or not. It could be through Fan pages, user comments or simply product promotion. But social marketing alternatives are emerging, allowing customers to post their purchases or their “likes” to their Facebook walls, or even encouraging them to invite friends to participate in a discounted group purchase. Today, many companies are actually moving to actually selling on Facebook directly.

These two approaches to social commerce take social media a step further by bringing the ability to purchase what’s being talked about on the social network within the network itself. E-tailers are more than aware of the fact that every page they ask customers to click through to results is a drop-off in numbers of people who convert, so the strategy is straight-forward…one brings the checkout to you, the potential customer, than rather the other way round.

As a customer what does that mean for you? It’s brings the convenience of having your trusted information and tools to make the best personal shopping decisions… all in one place. Moving beyond just product information but having relevant advice from your trusted circle of followers…and who knows, your friends just might introduce you to new interesting items that you didn’t know about. It’s this ease of purchase, in combination with the persuasive buzz and consumer-driven product discussions that will have been generated on the social networking sites, that’s likely to increase sales for e-tailers.

So is social commerce the future of e-commerce? Will e-tailers move more towards using Facebook or their own branded online communities as a direct space for selling products? Only the future can answer that question today…but I can say that social commerce is here to stay… at least as a contributor to an overall e-commerce strategy.