I am thinking of creating a plugin to help track and share gift suggestions with people, so people can receive and give gifts they actually want.
Currently, gifting is challenging: you could take a gamble and give someone a gift they don’t actually want. You could ask their friends or family what to get them, but they might not be able to clearly identify someone else’s taste and know what they would actually want. With this plugin, you’d simply allow it to track your web browsing activity (similar to social media), and others you allow to see your activity would get personalized gift recommendations for you.
Is this something you’d use?
Cool idea. I’d love to get more personalized, better gifts! One thing to note: what if you’re browsing for gifts for someone else? Or just browsing for the sake of browsing? Maybe I’m looking for items that I wouldn’t want as a gift, and I wouldn’t want the plugin to share with my network those suggestions, as they’d be incorrect.
Good point. Maybe folks can indicate when they’re “online shopping for themselves,” and allow the tracker to collect information about their gift preferences only during those sessions. Although they tracker should also record if they’ve already bought something for themselves during that point…
I like this a lot ^ Maybe an on/off switch to indicate if you’re shopping for yourself or just browsing?
A good way to do this would be the way coupon/discount tools like Rakuten/Honey do. You can allow access to an extension, enable it for certain browsing sessions and disable it for others. That puts the power in the hands of the user, so they can choose what information to share/not share.
Thanks, all, for the really helpful suggestions. I definitely want to make this as seamless an experience as possible, so I’m leaning towards an implementation where this is an extension where you can enable sharing based on your own comfort levels/intentions. Super helpful as I move forward. Thank you!
Hi Jon_leavens,
I like this idea a lot, but I wonder if I can just participate in receiving other people’s wish lists instead of needing to have one of my own to share? This sounds too complicated for me to set up myself, but I would like if I could receive an SMS from my daughters with a list of these gift recommendations so I would know what to give them. It would be nice if there were a less technological technology solution too 🙂
Sincerely,
Weston