We have posted about Pronto several times before. If you are not already familiar with who they are, a good place to start getting to know them would be the interview we conducted with John Foley of Pronto. They also recently announced a partnership with ScanAlert that we covered. Lots going on over at Pronto.com, their team must be exhausted.

Today, Pronto.com not only has a new tagline, “Shopping Gone Social,” and logo but they also announced that they are now the first comparison shopping engine to enter the social shopping space with the launch of new community features that allow users to rate products, interact with other users, write reviews and gain insight from trusted peers and other like-minded shoppers.

Pronto.com is approaching online shopping in an entirely new way – Already the Web’s fastest growing comparison shopping site with over 3.1 million unique monthly U.S. users, Pronto.com is changing the Online shopping model by becoming the first to fuse comparison shopping with a full range of social features.

Pronto already provides consumers with access to over 70 million products from over 65,000 merchants directly on Pronto. With the launch of new social tools, they have become the only comparison engine that helps shoppers weed through all of these product choices by allowing them to express themselves through the products they like, want and own, therefore helping others make better, more informed shopping decisions.

Here’s what Pronto CEO, Dan Marriott, had to say about the new social shopping features:

Traditional comparison shopping engines provide advice on WHERE to buy products, but do little to help users decide WHAT to buy. At the same time, existing social shopping sites fall short by relying on users to gather products from across the web for them – which dramatically reduces the number of products available to the community. The new Pronto.com combines the best of social software and product search into an online shopping community that has not existed until today so consumers can visit one destination for the most fully informed shopping experience.

Pronto.com’s new social shopping functionality includes:

• User Profiles – Users can create personal profiles consisting of their favorite products, brands and stores as well as personal pictures and answers to profile questions.
• Brand and Store Level “Likes” – Users can express their interest in particular brands and stores in addition to their favorite products, providing other shoppers greater insight into their tastes and style.
• Lists of Top Liked Products – Users can quickly see the most popular products in a category based on the number of people who noted that they “Like” the product.
• Social Networking – Registered users on Pronto.com can invite their friends to join their personal network so that they can share knowledge and opinions on products.
• Peer-to-Peer Messaging – Users can communicate with each other via private messages to discuss products, brands and stores.
• Local Filtering – Users can track the hottest trends in their city by searching the most “Liked” products by region.

Pronto has been testing some of these features for over a month now, but this is the first big announcement about the inclusion of social shopping features into the comparison shopping engine. I look forward to seeing what Pronto puts together in the future. For now, they have certainly made a mark and my guess is that this is just the beginning for them. Kudos for being the first comparison shopping engine to enter the social shopping space, job well done Pronto!

Pronto.com is Featured as one of the comparison shopping engines on our Product Listing Guide!