Very recently it was reported that Yahoo has added millions of Flickr images into its image index.

This is a huge step for Yahoo! in their efforts to improve relevancy!  This has to be the central reason why Yahoo bought Flickr in the first place way back in March 2005!  It’s impressive that a move towards social search was imminent way back in 2005!

Having taken the first step, Yahoo are heading in the right direction towards using social search and rank to increase the relevancy of their image search!

The latest statistics from Hitwise has revealed that the arrival of MySpace has had a significant impact on shopping carts.  Shopping carts now receive 3.15% from MySpace - up 86.1% in the past year

LeeAnn Prescott from Hitwise notes that the increase from MySpace to ecommerce shopping sites could have several explanations: more advertising presence on the site, a general increase in traffic to the website or Google search on the site.

So, despite scepticism about the advent of social marketing, it seems it might be starting to take hold.  TopShop for example got 5% of its shopping traffic from MySpace.

It will be interesting to see what the traffic stats are from social network sites next year.  My prediction:  Facebook will be up there with MySpace and there presence for ecommerce sites will continue to grow!