Here are some of the features recently added at StyleHop:

- Improved messaging: Send private messages to your friends, extend a compliment to a cool review, or forward a review to your friend

- Be a Fan: Follow your friends, college buddies or fashionistas.  You will be notified (via News Feed) when they update their profile.

- Share your views to the StyleHop community: Write and forward your twitter-like review on your favorite (or not-so favorite) styles to your friends

Froilan

I was at Charles Forman’s talk yesterday at the Web2.0 New York Expo about game mechanics and how they drive engagingness/stickiness.  Charles knows what he’s talking about – He’s the founder of iminlikewithyou.com and has been programming games since he was like 5 months old. Drawing on his experience in Korea where gaming is more developed than the US, Charles asserted that folks like to play games to socialize with people who aren’t just their friends.  While traditional social networks right now are all about your friends and friend network, I think the future is the opportunity to find people who share your interests, tastes, points of view, etc but whom you have never met and never will.  A good recap of Charles talk by Mitch Wagner (click here)

Jay Adelson, founder of Digg, made a similar point during his keynote talk this morning.  He made a strong argument that the future of the web is not just about friend networks.  The big opportunity is using the collective wisdom to specifically get information interesting to YOU.  He said the folks who are your friends usually don’t share your exact interests – but there are LOTS of people out there you don’t know that do.  True in fashion, too, right?  I agree with these guys and it’s why we are working to create a fashion shopping engine where you can see top style of your fashion peers – not just your friends.

We’re still competing in Vencorp’s Mashable Showdown and now we just entered  Babson’s $30,000 Innovation Competition.  I’m really enjoying these contests.  Unlike the old school business plan competitions, v2.0 always seems to include a crowdsourcing element.  That’s great because you can get early feedback on different elements of your plan and then iterate before you get in front of the live judging.  And, as a new entrepreneur with zero experience pitching investors, they have been great way for me to get my game on before all the fun begins.  Oh yes, and if we win, not bad PR there either.

If you aren’t familiar with Babson College, it’s a real hotbed of entrepreneurialism and I am fortunate to know the president of the College, Len Schlesinger.  As a former professor at Harvard Business School and the the Vice Chair at the Limited, he was an encouraging early advisor to me on StyleHop.  I haven’t told him we entered StyleHop in the competition so it would be such a cool surprise if we win.

As part of our Babson entry we uploaded a bunch of information about StyleHop including a cool 1-minute video here.   If you want to help us out in the competition, here are a few things you could do when you go to the link (you will need to register to do these things):
1.  Give us a star ranking
2.  Hit the “follow” button to follow StyleHop
3.  Hit the Digg and/or Delicious buttons to upload our company profile to those sites
4.  Leave a comment on our company profile

Thanks,  Dave

I’m happy to announce new features that will further enhance your StyleHop experience.

• Invite your friends and build your StyleHop network! “Social networking” features are up.
• Manage your account profile (password, status, photos, and more)
• Create Lists — wishlist, recommend-to-friends list, to-buy list, or organize your favorite StyleHop styles into your very own list
• View Mini- and News feeds: keep up-to-date on your friends’ activities
• Navigate through these new features in an improved Profile layout (MyStyle tab)

Of course, these features are tied neatly with our Shopping Engine and StyleHop Rewards program. So keep in mind that not only are you enhancing your profile/expanding your StyleHop network/playing games, you are feeding our recommendation engine (in turn giving you filterable shopping) and you earn points towards your next StyleHop purchase!

We appreciate your continuous comments, bug reports, and feature requests on our Feedback Forum. Keep them coming and stay tuned for (even more) enhancements next few weeks.

Froilan

We were picked as one of the nine finalists in Mashable’s startup showdown.  Yahoo!!!!!!