Interview with Kendal Liddle, President of gimmeo.com
Along with other interesting persons and companies which Dating Ad Network staff met back in January, during iDate Miami 2009, there is Kendal Liddle, President of gimmeo.com . The idea of providing services for making real-world gifts available for the members of social networks and dating sites seems quite promising. Moreover, it’s also a great way to monetize traffic, even on free sites. Below is an extensive interview with Kendal, covering all the aspects of gimmeo project.
Q: Gimmeo - how did you come up with this name and the whole idea of the project?
A: We had a good idea and a great partnership model; we just needed a good name. Originally name for gimmeo was GiftFish but we wanted something more unique. The name came from my wife. She pointed out that the main reason gimmeo would be adopted by the end user was not because people wanted to give, but because they wanted to get gifts and we should make a play on that. She suggested the word “gimme” be used somehow. The “o” was added the following day by Hugh. It’s catchy and blatantly honest (plus the URL was available).
As a company, gimmeo started with a typical one-up conversation between friends. I was telling Hugh Plautz (CEO and Founder of gimmeo) about how iTunes went wrong and my great idea for distributing online media. Hugh one-upped me with his idea for real-world gifting through social media by means of an e-commerce privacy proxy. Needless to say his idea was better and he won the one-up contest as I began groveling for a chance to be a part of Hugh’s idea – this technically was our first board meeting.
The true origins of gimmeo as an idea goes clear back to 1999 when digital music first was becoming available online. Hugh thought it would be a great idea to be able to gift a song to a friend via the Internet. The idea evolved over time from digital music to real-world gifts and eventually into gimmeo as we know it now.
We doubt we are the only ones to have thought about real-world gift giving in online relationships. We and about everyone we talk to is incredulous that nobody else is doing this – that’s why we applied for a patent. Granted there are a few other small companies trying to add real gifts to social media, but none of them we have seen are looking at the whole picture. We built gimmeo to be the evolution of online relationships in virtual worlds. gimmeo has the potential to create an entirely new type online transaction – not just on one site with a smattering of gifts, but industry wide on dating sites, social networks, even chat. The gifting possibilities are also as endless as the internet.
gimmeo has one other major point of differentiation and that is we built gimmeo to be an ecosystem of partners where each benefit from the other more than by trying to do it all themselves. We knew that our success was based on the success of others. Rather than looking for the way to grab the whole pie we sought ways to create value for our partners knowing that in doing so would make the big bigger and better. We set out to create the best partnership, a social media site could have.
Q: How does it work - from both frontend and backend point of view?
A: gimmeo is not a merchant or a website – this is where most people get confused. gimmeo is a privacy proxy (think Paypal) that allows one person to purchase a real-world gift for another without either party knowing or disclosing their private information. gimmeo resides as a feature on social media sites. The only way to use gimmeo is to find it on a social media site. If your favorite sites don’t have gimmeo, send them an email, or sixty, asking for it. (hint, hint)
The simplest way to explain gimmeo is like this. The sender wants to send a gift to a recipient, but they don’t have their address, but gimmeo does, so the sender pays gimmeo to send a gift to the recipient. gimmeo does not reveal anything except the screen names of the two parties. The gift is exchanged, both parties are happy, but neither party has the ability to discover the others personal and private information.
To send a gift, a user simply clicks a “send a gift” button while viewing an online friend’s profile, selects a gift from any of the participating merchants’ shops and proceeds through a standard checkout procedure with the exception that the sender does not enter the recipient’s delivery information. And when they are done, they are back looking at the online friend’s profile. Using gimmeo is not much different than sending a virtual gift except, of course, the real gift is a lot better than a picture of a teddy bear.
gimmeo is a simple concept with a lot of complex technology behind it. Data bases, APIs, filters and firewalls, nothing new and nothing exciting as far as the technology goes. What is exciting is how we put it together to do something novel to address a real need in social media.
Q: How do you see social networks and dating sites using your service?
A: Social media has two main challenges; monetization and stickiness.
Our revenue sharing is simple – we give the entire sales commission to the social media partner. That’s right, 100%. And since gimmeo has no licensing fees or external costs to the social media partner site, this is pure profit. There is no way they can make more money doing it themselves. gimmeo is a simple and turnkey solution to the problem of monetizing.
Stickiness is also something social media sites are concerned with. One of the problems with pay-per-click advertising or affiliate programs is that in order for the social media site to get paid, they have to send the site user off their site. gimmeo functions not as a separate site, but as a feature within the social media site itself and is skinned to match the social media partner site’s brand. From the perspective of the gimmeo users, they do not leave the social media partners website when they send each other gifts, keeping the social media site users onsite socializing longer.
Merchant partners also benefit from partnering with gimmeo. Our merchant partners gain access to millions of potential customers with literally billions of friendship connections – any of which is a gift giving opportunity. Merchants also do not pay to be a part of this partnership with the exception of the sales commission offered to the social media site. Merchants are already paying to acquire customers and sales. gimmeo is just tapping into this practice and funneling that money to the social media site as a commission.
And the end user benefits too. gimmeo is providing them with the opportunity to make their online relationships much more real with real world gift giving without compromising their privacy. gimmeo makes it impossible for either party to discover the personal and private information of the other through a gimmeo transaction. We know from our research that social media users want a way to send real-world gifts and for the most part are not satisfied with virtual gift application. Just read the follow-up posts after any article mentioning virtual gifts on TechCrunch and you will see the market we are trying to serve. gimmeo does need to pay the light bill and we charge a nominal fee to the gift sender to act as a proxy and keep everyone’s information secure.
For social media users who do not require privacy, gimmeo offers the convenience of not having to ask for birthdays, gift suggestions, sizes and shipping addresses – making sending a gift simple and quick.
Q: What social media sites are already supported by gimmeo?
A: We are working to bring the first sites online shortly. We will be staggering the first few implementations of gimmeo over the next couple of months, but plan to offer gimmeo freely to all social media sites by early summer. There are well over 30 social media sites interested in gimmeo including some of the largest dating sites on the web. Those who adopt gimmeo first will have a competitive advantage to attract new members – another benefit we bring our social media partners. We will be announcing the sites using gimmeo as they come online via twitter @gimmeo.
Q: What gifts are available?
A: Literally anything could be given as a gift using gimmeo. gimmeo has partnered with some of the biggest and best e-commerce merchants to provide gift options. These merchant partners have literal storefronts inside gimmeo and manage their shops just as they do their main website to keep the gifting possibilities fresh. gimmeo users on dating sites will be able to purchase flowers, chocolates, cakes, perfume, gift baskets, jewelry, clothing and more. We have the ability to customize the merchant partners to fit the demographic of each site. Some sites might have a small selections of merchants, others could have virtual shopping malls, it is up to the social media partner sites to decide which merchants and how many.
Q: So, why should and how can webmasters of dating sites add your service to their sites?
A: The answer is simple: money. gimmeo is a new and powerful way for social media sites to monetize. Our merchant partners pay a sales commission each time gimmeo generates and order for them. These commissions are generally $5 or higher per transaction. gimmeo passed 100% of the sales commission on to the social media site. Since there are no lisencing fees or external cost to use gimmeo as a feature on a social media site, 100% of revenue generated by gimmeo is profit. There are many other secondary benefits gimmeo brings, including increased interactions between the site users, potential advertising relationships with the merchant partners, more accurate information about the site users for more targeted and valuable advertising, and providing a service that the site users want. There is no reason we can think of not to add gimmeo.
Implementation of gimmeo on a social media site only takes a few days and is designed to be as turnkey as possible. We will be taking the first few site implementations slowly, but the estimated time needed to get gimmeo running is only two days. Once gimmeo has been added to a site, there is very little to do as far as the social media site is concerned.
Social media is still finding its virtual feet and many sites are still searching for a revenue model that works. For many social media sites, especially the free site, gimmeo is the answer to their financial woes as advertising revenue flees the sector. We are very excited to be a part of this amazing transformation on the Internet we call social media. gimmeo is just one more step towards a more real online experience.