ShopSavvy has updated its application for iPhone 4, letting holiday shoppers add their own ratings and reviews in a Wikipedia-style crowdsourcing environment.

ShopSavvy’s 6.5 million users are expected to conduct more than 100 million scans between now and Christmas. The new version of ShopSavvy lets consumers not only to see information from its price comparison engine, but also add their own deals, discoveries, ratings and reviews to the company’s database.

First, the iPhone version of ShopSavvy didn’t quite compare to the Android version and was in need of an update to make it work better,” said Alexander Muse, co-creator of ShopSavvy, San Francisco. “We also wanted to implement crowdsourced product and price data.

“For more than two years the most requested feature has always been to give users the ability to add missing product and/or price information, and ShopSavvy 4 leverages the crowd to share products, prices and deals,” he said.

New features
New features in ShopSavvy 4 include faster scanning.

ShopSavvy 4 offers scanning that’s five times faster than any previous version of ShopSavvy for iPhone, with the ability to scan bar codes from any angle.
 
Consumers using the application can add and share product photos and prices.

When users find a product, price or retailer that is not already in ShopSavvy’s price comparison engine, they can instantly add it – taking the product’s photo and adding the price, store name and other descriptive information.

ShopSavvy 4 filters user submissions to optimize accuracy.

Application users can also add and share product ratings and reviews.

In previous versions of ShopSavvy, users could scan books, DVDs, consumer electronics and other products to call up third-party online reviews.

Sharing
In ShopSavvy 4, users can add their own ratings and reviews – and share them with the universe of ShopSavvy users.

The application also offers instant sharing on Facebook and Twitter. Find a hot deal? Tell friends on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks with a tap of the screen.

 ShopSavvy 4 offers a Twitter-like stream of special deals and short-term promotions aggregated from sources across the Web, as well as exclusive deals for ShopSavvy users.

Advertising
The application also offers advertiser highly targeted advertising.

For advertisers, ShopSavvy 4 now offers AdOns – advertising, coupons, warranty offers and promotions at the point of highest purchase intent, when users are standing in a retail store with a potential purchase in hand.

AdOns combine location- and product-specific data to deliver precise marketing content to users.

“Brands can now insert deals into ShopSavvy by filling out a simple, one-page form to instantly reach millions of shoppers standing in retail stores,” Mr. Muse said.

“2010 saw the rise of deal sites for services like Groupon,” he said. “2011 will be the year of product deals.

“ShopSavvy is riding that wave.”

Final take