Last November Google lifted the curtain on Boutiques.com, the result of the search giant’s $100 million acquisition of Like.com, to great fanfare. All of the right fashion bloggers had their own boutiques on the site, as did a number of celebrities who appear as inspirations on those blogs. The New York launch party was attended by an A-list style set including Carey Mulligan and the Olsen twins among others.

Less than 6 months later, traffic to the site dropped off by 94%. In January, Google AdPlanner estimated Boutiques.com had 2.6 million visitors per month; in April, the estimate was 170,000 visitors. Even worse, it seems that no one noticed.

So what went wrong?

We often cover the intersection of fashion and tech, and as far as that goes the acquisition of Like and subsequent launch of Boutiques would seem to be a pretty big story, but we held off on covering it. As big as their acquisitions can be, Google’s track record on non-search products is actually very hit or miss. If you want an example of why talent + a big buyout doesn’t always equal success, look no further than the story of Dodgeball/Foursquare. The same people who built current mobile darling Foursquare sold a similar product called Dodgeball to Google in 2005, and left after about two years because Google didn’t support the project the way they had in mind. The fact that you now check in to Foursquare, and not Dodgeball, should tell you everything you need to know. For every YouTube, Google likely has 2 Dodgeballs; and if their drop in traffic is any indication Boutiques.com is likely going to have more in common with Dodgeball than YouTube.

We can’t offer any inside information on this story (contact us, if you can), but even from the outside looking in there are a few things that seem to smack of neglect and a business that ultimately just doesn’t fit with Google.

Google’s Social Manifesto

When Larry Page took over as CEO of Google, he made the importance of social abundantly clear to Google employees, tying 25% of their bonuses to the success of Google’s social strategy. {Business Insider} Google’s +1 button is the most recent iteration of a strategy that ties search and social together, but in addition to Boutiques not being mentioned in any company communications surrounding social, there’s not a single +1 button on any Boutiques page.

In one of the few critical pieces after last year’s launch, Fashionably Marketing listed a number of the site’s cons from a publisher perspective. “Itâ€s going to be hard to get users to abandon other sites to be a part of the Boutiques.com community.  There are limited social sharing features; you can email or Tweet about a boutique, and thatâ€s it. Facebook was clearly left off because Google may want to compete with Facebook in the brand/customer engagement and sales arena later on,” editor Macala Wright wrote.

For a site built heavily around social features, the fact that no social improvements have taken place since launch is telling. For a comparison, Polyvore has nearly 90,000 Facebook fans – Boutiques.com has less than 750. The fact that they aren’t even tied in to Google’s broader search efforts makes us wonder how much time Boutiques has before it hits the deadpool.

Too Much and Not Enough

Part of the problem may be that Boutiques is still trying to figure out what it wants to be. Is it a celebrity shopping site? Place to follow fashion bloggers? Social community to share products? It’s a little bit of all of those things without being particularly great at one. In a New York Times article that ran when the site launched, that confusion spilled over to potential users.

Yet, after the meeting, both women identified an obvious shortcoming of Boutiques.com: As curated as it is, a lot still comes up in a search. Suggesting that too much information may be a turnoff to inexperienced Web shoppers, Ms. Son said, “Itâ€s going to take some getting used to, thatâ€s for sure.”

Nodding, Ms. Oliver said: “I feel itâ€s an amazing site, but there are a few aspects that are not very intuitive. Some people might go back to the regular Google search and look for their boots.” {New York Times}

Which might be okay if that’s how user behavior played out, but from all indications, users aren’t going to Google. They’re going to more precisely defined sites like ShopStyle (product search) and Polyvore (curated product layouts and social).  And though Boutiques recently introduced product analytics, which seem to be a better fit with Google’s offerings, Polyvore’s much larger audience is going to offer a much larger amount of data to brands.

Not Measuring Up

The numbers may be off, but Quantcast shows the rise and sharp decline of Boutiques.com

In the same New York Times article, Like.com founder Munjal Shah said “Shopstyleâ€s done one of the best jobs in my opinion of creating the right high fashion experience, but we think of it as Layer 1. Itâ€s kind of broken things down, but they didnâ€t go for a detailed categorization and they didnâ€t personalize.”

When we wrote about ShopStyle’s new mobile content offerings in February, audience data from Google Ad Planner put their January audience at 3.8 million visitors and Boutiques.com at a smaller, but respectable, 2.6 million visitors. Fast forward to data from April and the estimates for ShopStyle are 3.9 million, Boutiques.com is at 170,000.

The dropoff is more than likely the result of marketing arrangements coming to an end. Polyvore and Lookbook.nu were reportedly traffic partners, and lots of A-list style bloggers and celebrities were attached to the project as well. Which was great for a one time push – as indicated by January numbers, but not enough to sustain a site that at its core isn’t offering something markedly better or different than its competitors.

A look at the boutiques of many of the bloggers and celebrities turns up an abundance of items that have long been out of stock, seemingly indicating that few people are updating any more. Jack of all trades, master of none is the phrase that comes to mind. Meanwhile, Like.com has remained focused on a core visual search product and is estimated to have had 630,000 visitors in April.

We push fashion brands to embrace technology, but this is a good reminder that going at the fashion/tech intersection from the other side isn’t any easier. From the outside, it’s difficult to assign responsibility solely to Google or the people behind Boutiques, but everything so far seems to indicate that Google is going out of fashion.

For now, we turn our attention to the many fashion communities out there. Everyone uses Facebook, some people are still using MySpace, and Twitter has found more than its share of fashion followers. But even though MySpace has 580,000 fashion “friends” and Facebook counts 790,000 people in the US who are interested in fashion, chances are that most of those people aren’t there specifically to talk style. Here are a few places where they are.

Social Shopping

Who do you shop around with?

• Kaboodle
• StyleFeeder
• ShopStyle
• Osoyou
• Etsy
• Couture Society
• Sense of Fashion

For independent designers, Etsy has long been the go-to marketplace. eBay may have a more massive audience, but the 5-year old Brooklyn based company has a seriously dedicated community of crafters who enjoy the simpler (and lower) fee structure. Not to mention a tongue-in-cheek blog poking fun at some of the more questionable content that’s spawned a book. When you’re able to support not only your own site, but provide a foundation for others, you’re doing something right.

ShopStyle, StyleFeeder, Kaboodle and Osoyou in the UK are all driven by product search engines, but they each have communities to help point users to fashion finds they may have missed in a standard search. What else to they have in common? With the exception of Osoyou, multi-million dollar acquisitions by media companies. In the case of ShopStyle, it’s blog behemoth Sugar Inc., StyleFeeder was recently sold to Time Inc. and Kaboodle went to Hearst in 2007 for $30 million. Couture Society, which launched in 2009, is the new kid on the block and has yet to gain a significant audience.

Sense of Fashion is shopping focused but incorporates a little bit of everything with a marketplace, outside product bookmarks and personal style photos.

Personal and Street Style

• Lookbook
• Style Diary
• Trendmill
• StyleMob
• Weardrobe
• Fashism
• FashionFreax.net

When it comes to personal style communities, Lookbook is the biggest of the bunch, but it hasn’t stopped other sites from taking their best shot at organizing the thousands of personal style sharers out there. Style Diary, which was acquired by the recently acquired StyleHive (keeping up here? Good), is one of the first personal style communities, and a place where you can still find older photos of influential fashion favorites like Susie Bubble.

Weardrobe publishes user photos in more of a blog style, similar to Lookbook, and was recently picked up by shopping search engine Like.com. Trendmill has a revamped focus on community contributed street style photos.

Stylemob and Fashism throw voting into the mix for users to not on share their style, but get feedback. Though Stylemob was acquired by Glam in 2007, it seems the team’s efforts have been shifted to Glam activities – most user submitted photos and comments are still from 2007. Though Fashism is still new (they launched in September 2009), there’s a fairly active community posing style questions on a regular basis.

And the unexpected style star? Fashion Freax, which blends runway photos in with user submitted pics. The German website may not be as familiar to English speaking audiences as some of the other personal style communities. But with plenty of participation and English, Portuguese, French, Spanish and – of course, German user interfaces it’s in a good position to be a truly international resource for style watchers.

Fashion Networking & Discussion

• Fashionising
• IQONS
• Nineteen74
• Ykone
• the Fashion Spot Forums
• 2threads

If you’re not a fashion exhbitionist, and you’ve already decided how to blow your shopping budget, fear not: there are still plenty of communities where you can connect with other fashion followers to discuss which new face stood out most on the runways, or which magazine made your month.

Australian based Fashionising got its name from a combination of fashion and socializing, and has built a very respectable worldwide audience from their combination of community profiles, forums and a frequently updated blog maintained by the site owners. Fellow Aussies, 2threads, started as a newsletter in 2005 and launched a formal community in 2009. While Fashionising is the bigger site of the two, 2threads has added seems to have regularly updated community content and should get a push from more prominently highlighted marketplace sections.

Forums, one of the oldest versions of communities, may not get the media attention of social networks these days, but the Fashion Spot proves that they’re still a very viable form of social media. The invite only forums play host to discussions about models, magazines and many other things in between that can get thousands of replies.

In search of more professional social digs? IQONS and Nineteen74 are two networks offering creative professionals an opportunity to showcase their work and find people to collaborate with based around portfolios rather than shopping preferences.
(Disclosure: prior to starting Signature9 I was director of marketing and business development for IQONS)

Fashion Layout and Styling

• Polyvore
• Looklet
• Couturious
• Closet Couture
• Shmotter
• Schway
• Fashion Mash
• Avenue7

For those looking to let their inner art director loose, these are the sites that make it possible without the years of Photoshop experience. Polyvore, by far the most popular of the fashion layout tool sites, lets users mix products with their own backgrounds and images with regular competitions with major brands. Shmotter offers a similar experience, but may need to find a point of differentiation to grow beyond a Polyvore back-up.

The other sites, while not as large, have their own individual flavors. Fashion Mash and Avenue7, with large-eyed avatars and candy colored layouts respectively seem geared towards more of a teen crowd.

Closet Couture and Schway are focused more on a virtual fitting room experience. While Schway started with various UK retail partners and good pre-launch buzz, it’s challenging to actually see other users’ looks which may be a contributing factor to the lack of growth. Closet Couture, which launched as a site to connect users with professional stylists who would help connect new items with the things already in a user’s closet, has shifted to a more community centered styling model. The move was apparently the right one: there’s a current competition with Jimmy Choo, and past contests have had luxurious rewards like an Hermes Birkin bag.

Finally there are the sites that let you go beyond simple layouts to full on editorial shoots. Incredibly addictive, Looklet is a Swedish-based site that lets users choose models and scenery for backgrounds in addition to the actual clothes that appear. When Like.com launched Couturious, many people who’d tried Looklet noticed the striking similarities. The biggest difference is probably commercial intent. While Looklet seems to exist purely for the pleasure of pulling a virtual shoot together, Couturious hopes the DIY editorials will encourage users to buy the items they’ve worked with.

Fashion Bookmarking

• Stylehive
• This Next
• NotCouture
• Open Fashion

Acquired in February, Stylehive was once one of the style bookmarking challengers to acquiring website ThisNext. While there’s probably not 100% crossover – ThisNext includes home design objects in addition to fashion, the pairing makes sense.

While Stylehive and ThisNext bring shopping and recommendations into the process, NotCouture keeps things comparatively simple with editorially selected submissions featured on the front page, and little else. Users can submit and heart items, but otherwise the focus is on cool products rather than cool people.

OpenFashion focuses on polls comparing bookmarked items, but seems to still be in search of something that compels people to come back.

Deathwatch

• Her Fab Life

We began to include Her Fab Life in the list of bookmarking sites, but a look at the front page shows that the upstart community has devolved into a place to list… well, almost anything not even remotely related to fashion. While the site is still around, it may only be a matter of time before the owners decide to stop paying the hosting bill and let it go.

Deadpooled

• Share Your Look
• My Style Post
• Style Du Jour
• Fashionspace
• You Style Me
• Our Threads

While there are many fashion communities actively going for their share of the online style pie, some never grew to a sustainable level or caught the attention of larger companies. Share Your Look and My Style Post were Style Diary competitors that didn’t gain a significant following. Style du Jour had a model similar to Closet Couture. Fashionspace was a UK-based community similar to 2threads in the combination of networking with a marketplace. You Style Me was similar to Fashism and Style Mob for the ability to vote on different user-submitted looks. Our Threads attempted to tap into the independent seller market, but offered the ability for users to swap clothes.

Designer Calvin Klein has teamed with Polyvore to launch a design contest for the fashionable and creative CK lovers out there. Design your own collage featuring a seasonal ad with various articles of clothing and accessories for your chance to have your design featured on the CK Facebook page. There are cash prizes for runners-up, but hurry because the contest closes November 30th.

Read the Full Story {Splendicity}