When you’ve sold your first venture to major players what do you do for an encore? While I might be content to buy a catamaran and spend years roaming around the Caribbean, others actually try to do it again. And that brings me to LoopIt, the next act for founders of Endeca, ATG and the Oxygen TV network. The company doesn’t bill itself as social as a service, I just made that up, but I think it describes pretty well what the tool is designed to do. And I like it, a lot.

I think we’ve all seen demos that are “something like it ” from IBM and others, but I’ve never seen one live and in production before. The concept is simple – shopping on the web is a pretty solitary activity, and asking friends’ opinions often involves a complicated exchange of links, and manual gathering of information. And…the retailer never gets to know the people the shopper is asking or even what they said about the product(s) in question. LoopIt solves that problem in a simple yet elegant way.

You can create an account by logging in with Facebook, or just by using your email account. The system asks “What are you shopping for? ” and seems to return a not-insubstantial list of products, at least in the two categories I selected. The next step is simple enough…either post the items in question on your Facebook wall, send a private message to your friends on Facebook, or ask them via email. They can either vote yes, no or I’m not sure. And…they can add comments. These all appear on the retailer’s web site (personal to the requestor).

So what’s in it for the retailer? It’s intriguing really.

• The basics: Fewer returns, as your customer is more likely to keep something her friends like.
• Introduction to New People: Ordinarily, you might never get to know the people your shoppers look to for advice and guidance, and they might never get to know you either. Through LoopIt, more eyes are brought to your website, and your products are showcased
• Insights: Yup, we’re back to the world of “big data “. All those comments posted become yet another vehicle to gather social sentiment. You might find out early if you’ve got a dog or a home run on your hands. And matching products to customers is a new Holy Grail in retailing today.

RSR doesn’t have a horse in this race. LoopIt is not a client. While I was introduced to one of the founders by a client, I wouldn’t even ask to monetize LoopIt for many moons to come. It’s pretty early stage. But we like to call it as we see it, and this product has a ton of potential. Big plus: the product is already live on Wayfair.com and Renttherunway.com (which is also a really cool concept all on its own!).

I can only imagine how it will evolve in the coming months. I know there are already benchmarks available …but to find out that information, you’ll have to contact LoopIt yourselves.

Honestly, we live in very cool times.