“A true social shopping experience is one that is social at its core—harnessing the power of social recommendations, social validation and user-generated content.”

Givvy is a social shopping app that helps Facebook users discover, share and curate extraordinary gifts for any personality.

The first of its kind, Givvy helps Facebook users meet their gift-giving needs by turning to trusted friends and curators for social gift recommendations. Users can browse gifts by unique personality types or they can choose to follow curators with matching interests. Users can also create personalized gift lists to share with friends & family, and keep track of their most important gifting occasions through a personalized social calendar. The entire Givvy store is merchandised by users, making it the first UGC-driven social shopping experience on Facebook.

MO: Can you explain what the user-experience is for your customers using Givvy?

Claudio: The Givvy user experience has four dimensions –
Product Discovery: The primary user experience is discovering products that meet gift-giving needs. Users can browse gifts by personality type, most popular, or by following the gift recommendations of friends and curators.
Curation: Users can become curators by contributing gift recommendations to the community. Every product on Givvy is user-submitted, so curators get to influence purchasing decisions and shaping gift-giving trends.
Gift Lists: Provides a simple way for users to collect and share all of the gifts on their personal wish list, or they can create lists tied to specific occasions such as a friend’s birthday.
Personal Calendar: Helps users keep track of upcoming occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, baby showers, etc. The calendar also matches targeted gift recommendations to each occasion.

MO: Why did you decide to go through Facebook to create this app instead of simply creating the website on your own, and how has this been beneficial for Givvy?