Over the past few months, social shopping is warming up to be another huge happening phenomenon on the Facebook. The following are two such social shopping apps that have occupied prime spots:

StoreEnvy

StoreEnvy is San Francisco based, and is a marketplace of stores owned independently. An online store can be opened for free; subsequently, you can place it on your Facebook Page using the StoreEnvy Facebook application.

Different from any store builders you know, the entire stores are connected via the StoreEnvy social shopping marketplace. When you add any product to your online store, it would be automatically added to the StoreEnvy marketplace and is likely to show on the homepage of Storeenvy.com. This way, people can search and shop across the entire shops simultaneously. Using the new version, those who use StoreEnvy can determine what is happening on the site’s homepage – which has been described as "Digg for cool stuff to buy".

According to Jon Crawford (Chief Executive, Storeenvy.com), shoppers can find pleasant stuffs across several shops using the site; they can also comment, discover favourite things and also see their friends’ favourite stuffs. Jon Crawford also said that the StoreEnvy is channelling its product development efforts to the social shopping experience right now; so, users would have lots more to enjoy soon.

Those who own stores can employ CSS control and full HTML to customize their stores to suite their heart’s content. Apart from PayPal fees, it’s entirely free; StoreEnvy.com developers intend to put up a ‘freemium’ model that would enable a free basic version and services with additional features sold on top of it.

Addoway

For the time being, Addoway – another online marketplace is presently rewarding shoppers who share deals with others on Facebook and other social networks. A virtual currency known as Addo Bucks has been developed by Addoway; this is what shoppers will earn for sharing deals with others. Subsequently, those shoppers can cash the virtual currency in, for discounts offered on products/ services transacted on Addoway. They can also use the Addo Bucks to participate on limited-entry private prizes giveaways such as Nintendo Wii or iPad. The virtual money can also be redeemed for free gift cards.

According to the chief executive of Addoway (Fredrick Nijm), it has been discovered that shoppers referral generated from social networking sites are 8 times more likely to buy when compared to shoppers that are generated from comparison shopping engines. ‘Therefore, it is sensible to offer our merchants several techniques to reward shoppers who share their pleasant encounter with their friends,’ said Fredrick Nijm. He also added that their system only encourages genuine positive experience sharing – this alsp being Facebook’s stand point.

Again, Addoway has upgraded its platform to assist merchants in growing their Facebook fan base; they achieve this by enabling merchants to give exclusive discounts to shoppers as exclusive rewards - only to their fans. Those who are shopping can "like" the merchants’ Facebook Pages from the Addoway platform.