Innovative Ways to Give Gifts this Holiday Season

The holiday season is soon approaching and many of us don’t know what to buy for our friends and family. Or, how we can top a gift from last year. According to the recent article posted by Fast Company, “6 Innovative Ways To Gift”, this holiday season is a time to utilize the social outlets available to find gifts for all of your friends and family. There are apps for food lovers, shopaholics, regifters, or the pickiest person on your list and “…the explosion of players in the social gifting space means there’s a service that’s right for each person on your gift list.”

For a friend that you consider a “Social Butterfly”, rely on Facebook Gifts. You can send a gift to a friend through this social network, allowing them to select another size, color, flavor of this item if they so choose. Once the final gift is decided upon, Facebook will then organize the needed steps to deliver this gift directly. The receiver of the gift will be notified of their arriving package with a tracking number and shipping details. Also, sending subscriptions to online services such as Hulu Plus, Pandora, or Rdo can be given through Facebook.

For a “Shopaholic” download the app Wrapp. This gives you the option to send paid gift cards to your Facebook friends. This type of friend is difficult to shop for and you cannot pick what they would like best, so send them something where they can decide for themselves! The companies that work with Wrapp start the cards at low amounts like $5 and $10 dollars, allowing you to add as much as you would like. A great feature to this app is the opportunity for your friends to also contribute to the amount placed on the gift card.

Some friends may be interested and intrigued by smaller businesses and love the idea of staying in the neighborhood. In this case, Boomerang accesses local businesses to provide vouchers for gifts at these locations. Packages can be sent from local businesses in Chicago, Austin, New York, and Indianapolis. They are also working on adding some larger retail shops for those not in these areas.

We all have those picky friends, the ones that always seem to find something wrong with the gift they received. Giftly “treats gift cards like blank checks by letting you designate a cash amount good for virtually any business or service.” You can be specific with it, like $100 to a restaurant and they choose exactly where the money will be spent. It is basically like sending out cash because Giftly is not directly working with merchants. Who doesn’t love getting cash for the holidays?

Plumfare is a great way to send a gift to your Foodie friend. When you’re at a restaurant and enjoying a meal you know someone specific would love, take a picture of the meal or drink for up to $100. Then, using Plumfare, notify your friend through Facebook, email, or texting of the gift that you are sending. The money is only charged once the friend redeems this gift within 30 days.

We all have the notorious regifter friend and the app Gyft is a great option for them during the holiday season. This app allows you to upload any existing plastic gift cards that you may have and also purchase and send any through the app itself. This app is great for the regifter because you can send any card that you have on your own platform to somebody else. Also, you have access to hundreds of retailers. These cards can be sent through texting, email, and even Facebook.

All of these apps provide great gifting ideas and outlets for your friends this holiday season. Do not let the holidays sneak up on you, get started soon and you will be thankful that you took advantage of all of the available resources to send your friends something that they will enjoy.