s vision

Giftly, A Startup That Wanted To Make All Gift Cards Digital, Had A Pivotal Moment Yesterday

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/giftly-2012-9

tim bently giftly Giftly, A Startup That Wanted To Make All Gift Cards Digital, Had A Pivotal Moment Yesterday

Giftly launched last September with nearly $3 million in funding and a dream of making all gift cards mobile.

But after the holiday season struck, founder Tim Bentley and his team of ten started to rethink the product.

Giftly was a location-based gift card service. The sender could pick a venue and gift a friend a small sum to spend there. It used geo-location to unlock the giftcard when the recipient neared the venue.

But Bently found people preferred gifting items over locations. He and his team shifted the company’s vision, so much so that the site now reads, “A Giftly is not a giftcard…it’s better!”

They spent six months creating an iPhone app which went live yesterday. Now Giftly lets users send items or experiences to friends from their mobile devices.

Here’s how it works: A user selects a Facebook friend to send a gifted amount to, up to $250. They then select a suggested venue, but the Giftly can be unlocked and used anywhere by the friend. They also suggest an item for the friend to buy (see screenshot below).

When the friend uses the Giftly, they’re asked to send a quick message of thanks and a photo of the purchase to the user.

At its core, Giftly is a way to send small sums of money to friends, wrapped up in a thoughtful way. If you actually want to send your friend something like flowers or a cupcake, you’re still better off calling an actual store and getting the items delivered. But Bently thinks there’s a use case for people who want an easy way to be thoughtful from time to time.

“When we surveyed our users before, we asked them ! how ofte n they’d buy gift cards for people. They’d usually say twice per year, on birthdays and holidays,” says Bently says of pivot. “We realized we were building a product around giftcards and locations, and we were being too conservative. Really, people give little gifts to each other all the time.”

Here’s what the new app looks like:

giftly Giftly, A Startup That Wanted To Make All Gift Cards Digital, Had A Pivotal Moment Yesterday

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Thursday, April 5th, 2012 news No Comments

specialized channels with niche and original content

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/08/youtubes-got-big-plans-for-web-tv-specialized-channels-with-ni/

youtube broadcast yourself. specialized channels with niche and original content

YouTube’s come quite a long way from its roots as a repository for random videos from the public. It’s gone from “Chocolate Rain” and the Tron guy to streaming Disney classics and now creating original, quality content. The New Yorker spoke extensively with YouTube’s Global Head of Content Robert Kyncl about the site’s future plans, and YouTube’s got its sights set on grabbing a big slice of TV’s $300 billion pie. Kyncl thinks the future of TV is in niche content, and YouTube’s original channels are just the vehicle to deliver it direct to your digital door. The site is commissioning people and companies to create the channels (as opposed to individual shows or pieces of content) which gives the creators freedom to program their channels as they see fit — all YouTube asks is that they provide a certain number of hours of programming per week. This production model is apparently pretty attractive to content producers, given the talent that’s on board and the amount of content that’ll be rolling out over the next six months.

The idea is that all the original content will get people watching YouTube for longer periods of time, and in turn grant more opportunities to reap ad revenue. Of course, these specialized channels don’t provide the wide advertising reach of traditional television, but they do allow advertisers to target very specific audiences with focused ads. That presumably provides them with better bang for their buck. Time will tell if YouTube’s new plan will win the war against traditional television and web TV (including Kyncl’s former employer Netflix), but free, quality on-demand content certainly sounds good to us. Get a fuller accounting of Kyncl’s vision at the source below, and feel free to sound off in the comments if you’re picking up what he’s putting down.

YouTube’s got big plans for web TV: specialized channels with niche and original content originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Jan 2012 06:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sunday, January 8th, 2012 news No Comments

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