Best Buy

Conference: DEMOfall 08
Market Segment: Consumer Software and Services
Funding Details: Internally funded
Competitors: Kaboodle, Plum, Wists, Kazowie
Product Description: Few services bring the social graph, shopping and gift lists together in an open and unbiased manner. Giftag is a browser add-on that lets a user pick things from anywhere on the web, add them to a list and share lists. Giftag is built using open standards and open source. It easily allows retail, user and web service integration by using microformats and open APIs.
Market Opportunity: 2007 online retail spending totaled $123 billion (comScore). Social Shopping is less than 1% of total market share, but there's been significant growth (Hitwise) At 1%, the size of the social shopping category is estimated at $1.2 billion.
DEMO Says: Online shopping was a popular theme among DEMO applicants this year, a good sign that it’s a sector in need of innovation. A key need among consumers as we move toward Web 3.0 is the integration of e-commerce into other parts of our online life. Giftag, a spin-off venture of Best Buy, gets that and has developed a microformatspowered browser add-on to allow users to capture any part of a page and share with friends. It’s high time e-commerce caught up to the rest of the tech sector; technologies like Giftag are going to make that happen.

DEMO: The Launchpad for Emerging Technology