Dive Brief:

• Zappos.com has piloted a program aimed at the huge #OOTD, or Outfit of the Day, community on Instagram, the e-retailer announced at SXSW this year.

• #OOTD logs some 23 million images, many of them selfies, presenting a unique opportunity for an online apparel brand like Zappos, which sees the program as only growing.

• The pilot is called Next OOTD, tagged #NextOOTD. When users use that targeted hashtag, Zappos sends them a personalized shopping recommendation based on the user’s posts.

Dive Insight:

For all the talk of e-commerce growing in leaps and bounds--which it is indeed--there remains the unique challenge of online merchants to really connect with their customers. It is a distinct disadvantage compared to brick and mortar, but social media presents an opportunity for personalized interactions. What Zappos is finding in this pilot is that it takes a great amount of personalization for anything meaningful to happen. It will be interesting to see how the company manages to maintain that personal edge on a bigger scale.