The upcoming April Retra conference in Portugal has been fortunate in securing John Clare as the keynote speaker.

John will not only be able to talk about his days as the former chief executive of Dixons, but he will perhaps also be recruiting dealers for his new internet business.

John has been very busy since leaving Dixons, taking up appointments at Dyson, Cheapflights.co.uk and he continues as the chairman of Job Centre Plus.

Now, he is to be even busier as he has started a new website called Myfaveshop.com.

This latest venture is a partnership between John himself, Lord Saatchi and Michael de Kare-Silver.

Lord Saatchi is the well-known advertising guru. Mr de Kare-Silver has had a varied career including being responsible for the launch of the Pampers brand in the UK and writing a book back in 1996 called e-shock that forecast the growth of electronic shopping.

The trio has ambitious plans to create a new Web portal that will combine social networking with a shopping site.

A video posted on the preliminary Myfaveshop.com website gives a pretty good idea of the thoughts behind this unusual concept.

 I was intrigued to note that this preview site also uses Google Analytics to report back each visitor’s location and the time spent looking at individual pages.

Sites like Myspace, Facebook, and Bebo are very popular social networking sites that already have millions of customers.

Young students, who are now millionaires, created these very successful sites. John Clare & Co are definitely not students and are already millionaires, but these “oldies” are trying to beat the youngsters at their own game by creating an entirely new social networking concept.

Members will be able to create their own virtual shopping area by simply choosing well-known brands from retailers, who will pay to advertise on Myfaveshop.com.

Members will be prompted to create their own shopping mall and to fill it with a wish list of everything they have ever wanted to own.

Retailers will pay a “rent” for their virtual space and John & Co will also collect an additional “commission” on all sales.

Members’ friends and family will be invited to visit each other’s virtual shops and then to post product reviews and comments about the service received from suppliers.

This is not an entirely new concept, as there are already more than 98,000 members of a Facebook group that calls itself the Primark Appreciation Society.

And, of course, John Clare will be fully aware of the various Dixons related sites on Facebook – only some of which are complimentary.

The new venture aims to have five million members in three years.

It does not seem all that long ago when the financial press was full of stories about two former Comet directors, Peter Hopper and Eddie Styring, who set up a website called Helpful.co.uk.

At the time, some thought Helpful.co.uk was sure to grab a 10 per cent share of the UK electrical market.

Sadly, that enterprise did not last. Perhaps it was a little before its time and John Clare’s website will be successful.

Social networking sites have been very successful, but whether people want to join up to chat to each other and then go shopping together remains to be seen.

It will be interesting to hear whether any independents visiting the conference sign up to rent “virtual” stores.

I wish John well in his new venture.