Great info on TechCrunch about Yahoo!'s announcement yesterday of Shoposphere, the portal's reprise of the mall concept that was all the rage in '95.

The neat thing is that this time, it just might work, thanks to clouds and tags and neighborhoods and other non-traditional "folksonomies" of Web organization. Using tags, information that was formerly constrained by the limitations of a traditional coding or filing system index can float free among numerous queries, alighting when triggered by a tag.

The Shoposphere is among several contenders among major portal players in aggregating content for enabling both traditional e-commerce and the burgeoning m-commerce opportunities. E-Bay and Google are also in the fray, the former re-vamping its Reviews and Guides section, and the latter rolling out its Google Base beta, (as well as an RSS aggregator on the presonal home pages, among other innovations.)

It's interesting to me that eBay made a big push last Friday for the reviews and guides pages, offering posters landing pages with links to their reviews, auctions, etc. similar to Amazon's functionality. The problem is that eBay faces disgruntled developers and backlash from sellers tired of high fees given the number of alternative marketplaces which have emerged.

The aforementioned tagging trend is evident here, as well. There are tag-like terms included in the newly revamped recommendations, as well. (As well as my reviews of Enjoy Every Sandwich and Cognac and Bologna posted quickly after I saw the numerous opportunities to be the first reviewer. Remember, optimize the content--links from eBay are weighty.

Yahoo! and eBay both face a serious competitior in the $400 pound gorilla in the room. AuctionBytes reported that eBay partners Channel Advisors are working to integrate the eBay listings with a one click upload to Google Base. (Is this Froogle beta's destiny?)

Channel Advisor's Scott Wingo cited tags as one of the main differences between Froogle and Google Base.

The question is, who will shoppers trust this holiday season? Google's insistence on relevance, seemingly non-stop innovations offered free to merchants, and it's friendliness to searchers including prohibition on pop-ups and other annoying and interruptive tactics may give it the edge with serious spenders.

Another area that will be critical is success in integrating m-commerce into the shopping habits of those who are inclined to do their shopping in the mall without going into the stores, no matter where they are.