We’re officially in the heart of the 12 Days of Christmas and if you’re stuck on your final gift ideas, Shopycat might be the help you need.

Shopycat is a Facebook application that launched earlier this month which analyzes the data from your friends profiles on Facebook and then makes gift recommendations based on the information it collects.  The app was created and built by Walmart, so gifts come from their inventory, but it will also give you gift ideas from other sites like RedEnvelope, which features unique gifts; ThinkGeek, a site featuring gifts for geeks, and Barnes & Noble.

For example, when I put Charley Sexton (our Creative Director) into Shopycat it returns gifts based on the fact that he has the following interests:

- Star Wars
- Angry Birds
- Poker
- The Beatles

So one of the gift ideas for him based on his love for Angry Birds, is the Angry Birds Santa hat.  If I don’t like the Santa Hat, but think that Angry Birds is the perfect idea, I can then explore other gift ideas for that interest.

How can you use Shopycat?

- Find gifts for friends and family

- Shop for gift items in curated lists by category

The real power of Shopycat isn’t in finding that perfect gift, but in providing a starting point for you to do your own brainstorming and gift discovery.  Ultimately, we all know our friends and family better than Facebook can, but sometimes we need help to get the ideas flowing.

Building applications like Shopycat allows for retail businesses to leverage the information already part of social networks to their customers advantage.  For many businesses, answering the question, “what is the ROI of social media?” is of crucial importance and being able to tie social media to commerce is a great step in that direction.  Where can you leverage social media in your business?