The Gifts Project Lends Functionality to eBay Group Gifts

TEL-AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Gifts Project, a Social eCommerce Platform, today announced it supported infrastructure for eBay Group Gifts, an innovative online way to rally friends and family members to chip in together and buy a just-right gift for someone special. eBay, the world’s largest online marketplace and mobile commerce leader, launched the eBay Group Gifts pilot in time for the 2010 holiday season, and the functionality provided by The Gifts Project helped the tool deliver a new way of buying online with friends, while utilizing social graph information to help make the process simple and efficient.

“We saw solid success with our pilot effort, as customers purchased group gifts with a significantly higher average selling price than on eBay.com.”

The Gifts Project has developed a Group Gifting Platform for online retailers, marketplaces and gift stores, where friends can chip in for each other’s gifts while shopping at their favorite ecommerce websites. This B2B platform incorporates a winning combination of social networks and group payment together to leverage shoppers’ social buying experience. The Gifts Project is backed by top tier venture capitalists including Gemini Israel Funds and Index Ventures.

“eBay Group Gifts uses technology to make it easy to work with a customer’s own friends and family – the same people they’d collaborate with offline – to efficiently pick the perfect gift, split the cost and have the gift delivered right to the recipient’s door,” said Amit Menipaz, eBay Group Gifts project lead. “We saw solid success with our pilot effort, as customers purchased group gifts with a significantly higher average selling price than on eBay.com.”

eBay Group Gifts is the first solution that meets all the requirements of a comprehensive social shopping platform: ease of use, integration with a user’s own social network, the ability to shop from the world’s largest online marketplace and a simple, secure way to collect money.

Ron Gura, the Gifts Project CEO, shared some of the proceeds: “Group gifting with eBay has shown clear results: 41% of all group gifts organizers that purchased a gift connected with contributors through their social network and about 65% of the users who started a group gift, engaged with the site on a daily basis. I believe our vision to facilitate group gifting on any leading ecommerce brand will help our clients to stand out in a competitive landscape.”

About The Gifts Project

The Gifts Project is a social ecommerce platform for Group Gifts that helps online retailers to leverage their shoppers’ social buying experience. With Group Gifting, friends can share their special occasions with their social graph by actively participating in buying a Group Gift on any retailer's website. For more information please visit our website: www.giftsproject.com

Tags: social ecommerce, registries, payment methods, group gifts, Gemini Israel Funds, Appchee Applications, Dr. Yossi Vardi, group buying, online retailers, Index Ventures, eBay