Hearst has announced its second online acquisition in two weeks: first it bought UGO for between $100-$150 million, and now it is buying shopping recommendation site Kaboodle, reports WSJ. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. (Updated: Om says the price was around $40 million).

The startup, based in Santa Clara, CA, last year received $5 million in first round funding, from a syndicate of 10 investors, from Georges Harik, former director of Google Labs and an early Google employee, to Ron Conway. It started as a general sharing service, where people could save their search results from other sites, for other users to review…and then it quickly morphed into a commerce/shopping recommendation site, where users can browse, tag and collect finds from other shopping sites. The site’s 250,000 registered users can also rate and review the products they save...it generates revenue through advertising and affiliate relationships with more than 1,000 retailers. For more on the company’s genesis, read this interview with Manish Chandra, Kaboodle’s CEO.

Hearst wants to include Kaboodle’s service into the websites of its magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, mixing content with commerce. Also, it wants to develop Kaboodle into a larger independent lifestyle site by adding more content and then more advertisers, the story says.

This probably means others in this category, Stylehive, ThisNext.com, and MyPickList.com, will also be looked at now by others, if they haven’t already been.

• Physical Commerce Through Social Networking Sites
• Collaborative Search/Content Firm Kaboodle Raises $3.55 Million
• Hearst Buys UGO.com; Possibly As Much As $100M-$150M