To start off, let me reassure you – no, I will not become Techcrunchy. Too many blogs will just copy and paste headlines from Techcrunch, Mashable, Readwriteweb, and the rest of the bunch.

But I will post about what I believe are great ideas. Startups in the digital sphere usually pick up on one central idea, the solution to a problem of future customers. If that value proposition is really compelling, I will share my thoughts.

Meet Shopit, a copmany that has just received a moderate $2.5mio funding infusion by Emerson Ventures.

Here's what Tradevibes has to say about the startup: “Shopit is a simple to use commerce platform that enables efficient sharing and publishing of products and information anywhere online.

Products and Services can be directly linked, from Shopit to any site, including popular destination properties like MySpace, FaceBook, Bebo, Friendster, Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga and many more.

Shopit enables users within these networks to buy and sell goods and services. Shopit's free commerce platform provides 100 percent Identity Management/Security features, Shipping Management, and the Moderation of the products, services and content published by its users. Shopit's free service is compatible on most social networks, blogs, and traditional ecommerce sites such as eBay, Craigslist, Yahoo Stores and Amazon. The service also supports communication with LinkedIn and Plaxo.”
 

So let's have a closer look:
What problem does Shopit solve?

• Shopit allows you to set up a digital store where you can sell your goods or services. That is not new, eBay offers this kind of service, so does Yahoo Stores or Amazon.

Where is the edge?

• Size of audience: Shopit allows you to tap into the audiences of the largest social networking sites and thereby opens the door to some of the largest consumer markets.
• Sell anywhere you want: That is significant since in the example of eBay, it works the other way round. Consumers go to eBay in order to find good transaction objects and prices. Shopit allows you to go to where the conversation happens.
• Service independence: While sites like eBay and Amazon will try to restrict infrastructure, e.g. payment services, to their own or affiliated service providers, Shopit can offer them all.

If the company takes the right steps forward, it has a good chance of creating something really lasting and viable. Some ideas:

• User growth, engagement, and execution - which should be the result of growth in # of merchants, # of items offered (total inventory), # of clicks on products and the # of transactions. Engagement will be central and traffic to the site (in terms of uniques or visits) is a secondary KPI here.
• So besides issues of stability, reliability, scalability of the service, the company will have to manage switching barriers of current online merchants. They seem to have noticed already:

• A service such as Shopit must emphasize top-line growth. Since they are the innovators in the market, they must try to grow members and users (as opposed to e.g. approaching a particular audience, e.g. former eBay vendors with high CLVs)

Why I like it
It's an app that leverages several very powerful networks. While MySpace and Facebook may be more "fun" oriented services, Plaxo and LinkedIn audiences have some more bying power.

I particularly like the approach to go to where your potential customers are. comparing the site's edge is almost like comparing malls with city center shopping roads.

Malls are usually situated outside of the centre and consumers drive out with the intent of a purchase - that's eBay. An oposite concept to malls are city centres, e.g. here in Europe where people go to socialize, to have a coffee and to maybe do some shopping as well - that's Shopit.

A final thought: I particularly like that Shopit pursues no monetization scheme that relies on advertisement. Instead, it’s a transaction cost driven business. I like that!

Some screens: