Melissa Rivers: Social Shopping Aggregista

Melissa Rivers has always fought to carve an identity apart from her comedian mother, Joan Rivers.

And even though the duo are living together again, it's Melissa who's pulling ahead, launching a business that has nothing to do with the family business — TV personality — although it does recall her days on the red carpet with mom.

Melissa this week launched a new digital brand: Shoparatti.com, centered around a website that she curates as editor-in-chief, serving up her take on the best daily deals for other social shopping junkies as she scours Gilt Groupe, Groupon and other offerings on behalf of time-pressed fashionistas.

Shoparatti — that is, Melissa and her team — promise to search more than 100 sites from the growing number of competitive daily deal web sites and aggregates and showcases the best offers.

Besides the Shoparatti website and a daily email (a la Daily Candy) summarizing the best picks (in her opinion), the content is also being promoted and parceled out on Facebook and through an iPhone app that launched this week.  

The site offers Melissa’s Picks, Group Deals, and hyper-local Deals, and is currently available in ten cities including LA, New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle.

A contest to attract visitors is dangling an Amazon gift card worth $1,000 as a prize.

For those not into shopping, you can always follow the continuing saga of life as Joan Rivers daughter on her Twitter feed.