TechCrunch
Yiftee Opens API To Give Developers The Option Of In-App Gifting
Yiftee, the service for sending local gifts to friends, has opened its “GiftUp” API with the hope that developers will incorporate its gift-giving capabilities into their own apps. Yiftee is banking on the notion that people will be more inclined to send gifts in context. When a calendar app notifies you of a friend’s birthday, for instance, it could also suggest that you buy her a cupcake from the local bakery.
At the moment, Yiftee has homed in on dating apps and social network platforms as their primary targets, CEO Donna Novitsky said, since the holidays and Valentine’s Day mean that people will be looking to buy presents for others. Through a partnership with Mastercard, Yiftee works with more than 2 million retailers.
The big competitor here is Facebook Gifts, which recently underwent a redesign that ended the sale of physical gifts in favor of digital gift codes or Facebook’s Gift Card. Although Facebook Gifts manager Lee Linden, previously the CEO of gifting app Karma before it was acquired by Facebook, said revenue from gifts is increasing, it has historically proven to be a tough sell to users, paling in (revenue) comparison to ads and games.
So can Yiftee do Facebook one better? Since integrating with Yiftee’s gift functionality now only involves adding a few lines of code, it wouldn’t be surprising to see apps testing it out to see if it takes, since it could be an easy point of new revenue.
“One of the main feedback points we’ve had is that we’ve talked to all these awesome apps, but they don’t have a way to monetize,” Novitsky said. “With apps, there are in-app purchases, and this gives them another channel to monetize.”
Yiftee will monetize on this through revenue sharing, with the plan to charge a $1 or 3 percent convenience fee for in-app gift purchases, whichever is greater. It takes a 75 percent cut of that.
Last we heard from the startup, they had raised $850,000 in seed funding from Scott Cook, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and other angel investors. In August, the team launched a feature for gifting to college students, an update on care packages.
The Artist Formerly Known As BlackBerry Now Approved For NATO Deployment
BlackBerry announced today that its Enterprise Service and BlackBerry 10 handsets have been approved by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to handle classified communications up to the level of “Restricted.”
The new certification theoretically allows BlackBerry to sell its new smartphones to 28 member countries’ NATO workers. The question is whether there is demand for its hardware among those nations.
There might not be. Here’s TechCrunch’s Chris Velazco on how BlackBerry managed to lose almost a billion dollars on under $2 billion in revenue:
“[T]he total GAAP loss from continuing operations came in at $965 million, right in the middle of the company’s forecasted range. The big culprit? A hefty writedown (think around $934 million) incurred thanks in large part to a glut of unsold BlackBerry Z10s.”
BlackBerry is a troubled company on the cusp of accepting a buyout offer for $9 per share that will see it head private for about $4.7 billion. The company’s most recent earnings report saw it lose a stunning $965 million on $1.6 billion in revenue.
Prior to this certification, BlackBerry was drowning under insufficient demand. In fact, that Z10 writedown was larger than the infamous Microsoft Surface writedown that totaled $900 million. The Microsoft loss has been deemed by some as partial reason for the exit of current CEO Steve Ballmer.
So, well done BlackBerry on the certification. Let us know if anyone wants a Z10.
As an aside, here’s the first line of BlackBerry’s own corporate explainer: “A global leader in wireless innovation, BlackBerry® revolutionized the mobile industry when it was introduced in 1999.” Can you spot what is wrong?
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