One of Shop.org’s new content features is the Critics Corner session. There were 4 happening concurrently as the last sessions of the day, and I joined in on Is There a Role for Social Media in Modern Retailing? with Jason Billingsley, VP of Innovation for Elastic Path Software and Paul Miller, President of Paul Miller Consulting.

Jason and Paul walked the room through about 15 live examples of social media campaigns from a variety of top online retailers like Sephora [tutorial YouTube videos), OfficeMax’ Penny Pranks (funny YouTube videos) and Folica (tips and tricks provided by customers appearing alongside product reviews).

The first example was Wet Seal’s Runway, a tool which allows customers to create their own fantasy outfits using Wet Seal clothing, and submit it to the Wet Seal community. It gives customers the chance to play stylist, preview what individual items might look like together, and interact with other shoppers like them to discover fashion ideas. There’s also an element of “fame” that a Wet Seal shopper can achieve if her outfits are popular and receive high community ratings.

Paul commented that when he was with Williams Sonoma, they had a virtual table where you can design your table to see what it would look like with your desired items on it. The problem was, in Paul’s words “people have crappy taste.” He believes a level of validation was missing. He was pleased to see that Wet Seal’s Runway utilize community feedback that rewards certain citizen stylists. Jason added that there is a drop-down where you can separate outfits styled by Wet Seal stylists and customers.

How can the Wet Seal Runway be improved? Paul would like to see more effective tagging employed by citizen stylists. For example, what if I want to see what people are wearing to parties? Jason would like to see more conversation started around the outfits.

Personally, I would like to see product pages including links to the community section and show which user-created sets include that item. In the perfect world, the highest-rated outfits would appear first, you could hover over the set to enlarge it without leaving the page, and you could add all the items from the outfit(s) you like to your shopping bag at once and then edit the items you may not want.

One of the challenges, especially with fashion, is that you may sell out of a certain item and the customer will not be able to purchase it. The question is — do you want to pull outfits that are past their sell-by date? Are they archived? Is there a way to help customers surf fresh styles? How would citizen stylists feel about having their creations removed?