Two of the dominant trends of the Internet over the past decade, social media and e-commerce, have overlapped very little and without much success. Retailers have tried to cultivate communities of shoppers with similar interests on their sites, without much uptake. Plenty of brands set up Twitter and Facebook pages, only to find that marketing to consumers in a social venue does not necessarily spur conversations about those brands.

Online stores shouldn't give up on social just yet, according to the results from a recent survey of over 30,000 users of the social network MyYearbook. While collecting data to explain why more teenagers don't use Twitter, MyYearbook CEO Geoff Cook graciously agreed to put my questions about social media and shopping to his panel of respondents. Here are the results: