In the past month I’ve had three shopping experiences with Amazon.com. One was related to purchasing a book. Another related to researching a new mobile phone purchase. And the third was in connection with last minute Christmas shopping.

In the process I spent quite a bit more time on the e-retailers site than I had in a long time. In the process I realized one reason why Amazon has maintained their lead in the online retailing space even though many competitors (like Buy.com, Overstock.com and eBay) have continued to thrive as well. Amazon does a pretty darn good job of creating a community around the products they offer. In short, the experience is a very social one.

Now I’ve been with Amazon since the early days when Amazon was a valuable source of books for a young soldier (that’s me) stationed in Germany. And although I continued to shop on Amazon over the years I really haven’t kept up with all the features that Amazon has added. Check this list of five features that I think make Amazon the tops in social shopping online.

1. Author Blogs - The Amazon Connect program allows book authors to write a blog (with RSS feed) that appears on their book sales pages.
2. One Click Subscribe - Amazon users can subscribe to author blogs with once click via the Plog feature. Short for personalized weblog, the plog is a page that allows a user to track aggregated content from Amazon.com. And each plog includes an RSS feed.
3. Tagging - Site users reviewing item pages can add tags. Tagged items are aggregated into the Amazon tag community page which displays weighted tags just like your favorite social network.
4. User Profiles - Each user gets a profile page that serves as a dashboard for all activity on the site, including recent purchases, wishlists and product reviews. Each user is afforded an RSS feed for their product reviews and their wishlists.
5. Customer Images - User generated content is all the rage. For quite a while now Amazon has solicited customer images of products to add to the manufacturer image galleries. They even provide a page to view the top 1000 customer images.

I’m excited about all of these features because when I put them into use I really get a lot out of the shopping experience from initial research to my final buying decision. The RSS has allowed me to keep track of reviews related to gadgets and books that I’ve got my eye on. And I’m really enjoying tagging items so other folks can find what they need a little quicker as other people’s tagging has helped me do the same.

Your mileage may vary. And I will probably continue to look around for better deals at other sites. But because of the social features in play at Amazon I’m more likely to spend more time on their site. And that will probably translate into more spending since the convenience of a one stop shop (for me at least) trumps paying a few less dollars at another e-tailer’s site.

[tags]Social Media, Commerce, Shopping, Amazon, RSS, Plog, Tag, User Generated Content, Product Reviews[/tags]