Consmr Marries Grocery Shopping and Social Media

The day has come. Your Greek yogurt is now a tool of social networking.

For a while now, we've been able to Yelp for business and restaurant reviews, but how about single product reviews? According to Ad Age, the retail of packaged goods is a $12 billion business in e-commerce, so why don't we buy products based on online reviews? Fear no more. Consmr.com (can I buy a vowel?) gives 50,000 everyday products their own brand pages, with space for user reviews and ratings.

Thanks to a partnership with magazine publisher Rodale, Consmr also imports product reviews from "Men's Health," "Women's Health" and "Prevention," enticing product bloggers to cross-post their reviews.

I visited the site to see what all the consonantal buzz was about. Having gone on many a grocery shopping spree with my mother, it was refreshing to be among a community of shoppers sans screeching carts, small talk, and rapid temperature change upon entering the freezer aisle. Many products do not yet have ratings (Why isn't Nutella boasting 5 stars yet?!) but the site also just launched yesterday.

I can see this being very helpful when searching for a specific food item and wanting to see all options before purchasing. An avid fan of peanut butter, I typed in the product and was presented with an array of brands, causing me to salivate and appreciate the system of the website at once.

There is also a Foursquare element to it. If you rate a certain amount of products, you rise in status. Right now I am a Stock Clerk but if I rate 10 more products I can get to the next level.

Down the line, I'd be interested to see if Consmr will let people compile and recommend full shopping carts or groups of items for meals or recipes. This could be a useful medium for party planners and nutritionists.

Upon creating an account, there are options to connect through Facebook and Twitter. If you do choose to sign up, you are a welcomed consumer who is effectively using the social media aspect of the grocery site. If you don't, you hate kittens. Obviously, the two are mutually exclusive.