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Social Online Shopping?

Just when you thought that more people were shopping online to save time and avoid the crowds, along comes a new site that's trying to making the online experience more like the real world. Marc Schaffer heads commercecity.com...

"CommerceCity basically is a very social opportunity. It's a community that allows people to be together. A shared shopping experience. A very social opportunity in a very high graphic environment. CommerceCity offers everything from shopping to education to entertainment to just plain, pure social opportunities in the town park or cafe'."

The site lets you create an avatar, a cartoon character of yourself, which you manipulate through the virtual town and into and out of stores...

"You actually walk down the street and you can walk down that street with friends and you're talking to each other. And maybe you stop at the news stand and find out the news or hit the Weather Channel and find out what's going on with the weather or you meet in the town square and you sit and talk and have coffee and say, hey, let's go buy grandma's present together. You can meet family and friends from all over the world and go to any one of our merchants and go shopping together. Everyone goes... very, very social experience."

Again, you can find the site at Commercecity.com.

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