San Diego Woman Solves the Challenge of Gift Giving with a New iPhone App - "Gift Share Love"

December 12, 2013 — San Diego, CA — newly-minted entrepreneur Marcela Smith had had enough of the perennial challenge: finding gifts that family and friends actually want to use. So she joined the world of mobile app developers to create Gift Share Love (http://giftsharelove.com), an iPhone app that makes it easy to create and share lists of your favorite products with whomever you like.

Gift Share Love lets users save live links to their favorite products on the web, and put them into lists which they share with friends and family. When their friends also download the app, they can invite each other to become "buddies" and see each other's lists of favorites, a.k.a. their "faves." Gift Share Love has relationships with over 50 major retailers, such as Amazon, Best Buy and Nordstrom, which are featured in the app, and users can also add favorites from any website URL. In addition to products, users can create favorites lists for pretty much anything they value and want share with others, such as charities, sports teams, hobby groups, books, restaurants, travel destinations, TV shows, movies – the list goes on. The app was launched on November 25, 2013 in time for the holiday season, and users can download it for free from the Apple App store.

Gift Share Love has literally been a labor of love for Smith. Without prior tech experience and no outside investment to help fund the project, Smith has pushed forward and bootstrapped the app development herself because she believes there is a real need for this app. "I was frustrated with how much time I was spending searching for gifts and never knowing for sure if the recipient would actually like them, " said Smith. "After doing an extensive search on the App Store for something that might help but coming up empty, I decided to create the app that would solve this problem for everyone." With the 2013 winter holiday season approaching, Smith quickly came up to speed on managing the creation of an app, assembled a development team, and worked hard in order to launch Gift Share Love by Thanksgiving.

Gift Share Love gives users four easy ways to add favorites to their lists:

1. Visit one of the popular retails sites already featured in the app, browse to find a desired item and tap the "add" button.
2. Use the app's search function to enter keywords.
3. Use the integrated barcode scanner to add items such as products in a store or a wine bottle in a restaurant.
4. Add the Gift Share Love "Clip" button to the bookmark bar of any major web browser on a PC or Mac and then click it to add any web page to a list.

Users can also access Gift Share Love on the web at http://giftsharelove.com with their mobile devices or any web browser on the PC or Mac. Lists automatically sync between the app and web versions of Gift Share Love. Users can also share lists with anyone via email, Facebook or Twitter.

About Marcela Smith
Marcela Smith is the creator of Gift Share Love, a mobile app and website that allow family and friends to share their favorite things with each other and more easily find just the right gift for any user of the app. Smith's broad business background includes experience in the real estate, interior design and nonprofit industries. She lives in San Diego with her husband, Charlie, who now always buys her the perfect gifts.