Seller Circle, a new site for eBay sellers that combines merchandising tools with social networking, has added a new "social commerce search" feature to its website. Buyers can search a seller's listings on their Seller Circle page. And, in an interesting twist, if the seller does not have any matching listings, their Seller Circle friends' listings are displayed.

Co-founder Christian Williams said, "As Seller Circle is focused on promoting not only a single seller's listings but also their friends' listings, this concept lends itself to the search feature as well." He pointed to the Seller Circle page of eBay seller "TheCrabbyNook" (http://www.sellercircle.com/thecrabbynook). A search for "vase" shows TheCrabbyNook's matching listings. But because the seller does not sell books, a search for the word "book" displays listings of books from the sellers' Seller Circle friends.

"We think that this new commerce-meets-social searching is going to be important to buyers from a trust relationship point-of-view and huge for sellers by keeping buyers "in the family,"" Williams said.

The site does not charge fees (it is a member of eBay's Affiliate program), and 1,000 users have signed up for the service since the site launched 2 months ago (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y08/m03/i21/s06).

http://www.sellercircle.com