As you’ve probably noticed, my post frequency has dropped off significantly for the past couple of months. The reason mostly has been because I’ve been working hard to finish Stuffist, the new “stuff”-oriented social site project of mine.

Stuffist is based on two basic premises.

The first is that when you buy something - say a new shirt or a new cell phone - part of the excitement is showing it off to your friends and colleagues. There’s nothing better than showing up to class or the office with your new shirt on and getting compliments. In the online world, driven by this same motivation, people post pictures and descriptions of their latest purchases on their MySpace page, blog, forums, etc. On Stuffist, you can post your latest purchases for everyone to see. Others rate and comment what you posted.

The second premise is that when shopping, an important consideration in your purchase is what others will think of your purchase. Few people go to the mall themselves. Instead we go with others in order to feed off one another’s opinions. Similarly, before buying something online, you’ll often send the product link to a few other people to get their validation. Many stores provide a “most popular items” in order to help guide you to a purchase when you are unsure. The bottom line is often times, we just wanna know what the hot new stuff is. The goal of Stuffist is that you can search for “women’s jeans” and see what jeans other women have bought recently and how each was rated by the community. Or in your spare time you just can browse around by categories and tags to see what other people are buying.

Anyways, I’ll write when I return from the trip. In addition to Stuffist, I have a long backlog of topics I want to blog about. I’ve been neglecting my blogging activities lately and I’m not happy about that. I’m also going to be reading some selections from the Personal MBA reading list during the almost 40 hours of flight time so I’ll have some book reviews & notes to share. Have a nice Thanksgiving!