{"id":1258,"date":"2011-03-21T11:03:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T18:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=1258"},"modified":"2011-03-27T02:37:23","modified_gmt":"2011-03-27T09:37:23","slug":"will-your-friends-jump-through-hoops-for-a-gift-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=1258","title":{"rendered":"Will your friends take a drive for a gift card?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2011\/03\/21\/giftrocket-lets-you-send-gifts-that-can-be-redeemed-only-at-specific-locations\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29\" target=\"_blank\">new service called GiftRocket<\/a> is creating virtual gift cards that are tied to the recipient being in the vicinity of a specific location (based on a smartphones GPS reading) to redeem them.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>GiftRocket, a Y Combinator-backed startup, is launching this week a service that marries the concept of virtual gift cards with location-based services.<\/p>\n<p>Basically, GiftRocket lets you send money to a friend or relative in a snap, but also see to it that the transaction is effectively made only when the recipient \u2018checks in\u2019 to a certain location.<\/p>\n<p>Hence, you could use GiftRocket to send $15 to a friend to sway him or her into checking out the breakfast offering at that coffee place you\u2019ve been raving about, or you can gift your mother a $50 bouquet of flowers but only if she visits that new flower shop a couple of blocks away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In my opinion, it is a toss up whether gift givers will actually want to make their friends or loved ones check in to a specific location to receive a virtual gift card or that recipients will bother.\u00a0 But as one of GiftRockets founders points out:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There aren&#8217;t any new hoops to jump through. Just like you&#8217;d have to go to a store to spend a gift certificate, we want recipients to go to the business to spend their giftrocket.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And the recipient gets money transferred to their PayPal account, which is considerably easier to spend (and to spend all of it) than most gift card, especially open-loop ones.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps a service like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.giftrocket.com\/how-it-works\" target=\"_blank\">GiftRocket<\/a> will be a hit with parents, who can leave a trail of small gifts to get their children to visit all the right places each day or each week &#8230; like school, the library, or home.\u00a0 Hmmm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new service called GiftRocket is creating virtual gift cards that are tied to the recipient being in the vicinity of a specific location (based on a smartphones GPS reading) to redeem them. GiftRocket, a Y Combinator-backed startup, is launching this week a service that marries the concept of virtual gift cards with location-based services. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift-card-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1261,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions\/1261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}