Giftology launches Android app; Initial Impressions

After raising a seed round earlier this year, Giftology has announced the launch of their Android app. The gifting service that allows Facebook users to send gifts to their friends for free, is now available for the Android platform. We've played with it for a bit and here are some interesting features about the app -

1) If you're a Giftology user, then you will find that the flow of the app is not different from the web application. However, the focus seems to be to get users to gift their friends on events. The first

view that a user gets after entering the app is a list of upcoming life events of their friends.2) Upon clicking on a friend that you would like to gift, the Giftology app, then gives you a list of free gift vouchers that you can send to the friend. Once you've done that, you can choose when you'd like to send the gift (today, a specific date or on the day of the event). After this you can write a custom message for the recipient. You can even share the fact that you're gifting someone via e-mail and SMS.

3) The app also allows the option of gifting others on your friend list as well. Apart from this, it gives you information about your account and the gifts that you've received.

4) The app also gives you push message updates prompting you to gift people on your list.In the app's next iterations, Giftology can definitely think about adding some options to the messaging option. For example, a simple 'Happy birthday' or 'many happy returns of the day' would make for a great user experience. Apart from this, the tabbed layout is a few generations behind the current design principals that the Android platform demands of. Having said that, these are problems that can be fixed.

With the launch of this app, Giftology might actually be onto something big... 

Could Giftology become a mobile first application? 

I think there is a good chance that Giftology could become a mobile first application because of the launch of their smartphone app. Gifting people is easier on this app and I don't feel like going back to the web app. Facebook itself for that matter, has become mobile first.

With a few design changes and launching in other smartphone platforms as well, Giftology could very well see more usage on mobile, than on web. Of course, this has to be supplemented with good gifting options, but this has all the makings of a great mobile first product.

Download the Giftology app and tell us what you think