But did you know that customer reviews are changing the way consumers shop and the way companies market their products?

Brett Hurt writes that this is a unique time in the history of advertising, because companies are literally using their customers’ word of mouth as a digital marketing asset to create entirely new forms of multichannel campaigns.

The site was launched in France in 2006 and has since expanded around Europe, with sites in Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland and other countries reaching a combined audience of over 9m users a month.

We caught up with Twenga CEO Bastion Duclaux to talk about its growth, as well as what makes his site different from the rest...

We talked to CEO Richard Anson about the deal:

The site's usability isn't perfect but users have become familiar with the way it works, and Amazon won't want to mess with a winning formula. It's the same story with eBay. Change isn't so easy once you achieve scale at a global level.

Nevertheless we've spotted some areas that could be improved upon...

It asks:

"What happens when following the fashion herd becomes wisdom of the masses? When everyone can become his or her own fashion editor? When "citizen" journalists replace glossy magazines as oracles of fashion?"

It describes how Forrester Research is advising marketers to “spend more on online social media as a cheap, efficient way to advertise during tougher economic times.”

Given the fact that it’s increasingly becoming clear that marketing on social networks is ineffective for the vast majority of marketers who have tried it, and is losing money for even the Googles of this world, Forrester Research’s 'research' seems to be quite contrarian to say the least.

Nielsen's analysis (pdf) of the 1,000 most influential blogs (ranked by number of inbound links) finds that gift recommendations are dominating holiday discussions on these sites.

That's the verdict of a Keller Fay Group / Bazaarvoice report, which surveyed 1,300 US online reviewers.

Figures from comScore suggest Amazon and Wal-Mart attracted the most custom, while the overall number of people shopping online was up 38%.

However, the traffic also caused issues - some sites were operating up to 400% slower than usual while Yahoo's Merchant Solutions service buckled under the strain.

The firm's deficit for Q3 came in at $936m (£458m), although sales were up 30%. 

Years ago, when I managed the Dell.com consumer website, it was always a mad rush to the deadline of getting site functionality up before mid November.

The auction giant starting running ads from Google and Yahoo! last year and, according to Juan Carlos Perez, sellers are unhappy that the targeted ads compete with products that are already on eBay.