Private: Intelligence

What do you get when you get a whole mess of people together to show the community what things they like? Well, the people at Thingd.com have created just such a community in thefancy.com, a site where people share photos of their favorite things with the world.

You join thefancy.com and scan through the things others have found and posted. Or you can add new things from any website with their toolbar button. Search for like minded or interesting people and collections. Follow collectors, experts, stores, or your friends.

When you see something you must have, you click the photo and get redirected to the site where the photo originated. From there (presuming it’s a store) you can buy it in the usual way.

As of this writing (I write some listings a couple weeks in advance) there’s no info on the site on how they plan to make money, but it’s easy to see so many distinct possibilities on that front. TheFancy.com might get a referral fee from an online store, or create it’s own “middlestore” that would allow people to buy on thefancy.com and get goods shipped from the originating store. That’s just two of the myriad examples I could provide.

I was impressed by both the originality of this concept and by the community members and things that they had uncovered. Search by item type, by user, by keyword, or just scan the panoply of everything recently uploaded. You get to see so much cool and unusual stuff, and by dint of it being “pre-fancied” by another member, you have some assurance that it is as cool as it looks.

I liken it to a virtual window shopping experience, but with a whole mess of very cool windows in which to peer.