Company

myFavz

20-Word Description

myFavz aims to bring back the elements of joy and surprise into the ritual of gift giving and gift receiving.

CEO’s Pitch

myFavz.com is a social shopping service with a magical twist, pKaboo! For many it is a daunting task, no matter what the occasion or type of gifts you’re choosing - birthday gifts, wedding gifts, graduation gifts, corporate gifts, anniversary gifts, or the mother of all gifts: Christmas Gifts. myfavz tries to solve the problem of finding the perfect gift idea for a loved one within their own budget through “pKaboo.”

pKaboo! is a patent-pending new social registry/wish list concept. The best part about it is that you do not have to create a list at all. It is gift giver driven and adapts to every gift giver’s budget. Just register as a member, invite your friends and you’re ready to go.

Mashable’s Take

There’s an endless list of wishlist services such as Wists, WishPot and BoxedUp that use the power of social networking. myFavz is a new wishlist service that can be added to this list, but offers a few interesting new twists. For example, there appears to be a good deal of interaction and communication with other members thanks to features like pkaWoo, which asks others for gift ideas or reviews of products you’re thinking about buying.

myFavz’s new feature, pKaboo, helps you learn more information about what kinds of gifts your friends and family members want most. The advantage of this type of tool is that unlike other wishlist services, you’re not asking anyone to join the service just to fill out the wishlist. This tool helps you discover what people are into, which improves the chances that your gift won’t wind up as a re-gift victim or returned. Also, the service isn’t locked into any particular store or merchant, so there’s a massive list of stores to select from as well as a useful list of the Most Popular Stores.

The bookmarklet for browsers is another handy feature that allows you to add products from any merchant website to your wishlist without having to copy and paste anything or leaving that site.

There are several other ways to interact with your friends and the community. You can see what your friends want most with the My Friends Favs option and you can see what members want the most with the Popular Favs option. There’s also a Groups feature that lets you join existing groups of members that share similar interests such as “Apple iPhone Accessories,” which allows everyone in that group to share their favorite iPhone accessories along with where to get them and the cost. If you can’t find an existing group that covers what you’re into, you can create it yourself and others can join it.

Overall, I like the fresh approach myFavz has brought to this crowded space. They seem to have most of the bases covered when it comes to buying things you want as well as gifts for others. However, there are a few minor complaints that can be easily resolved. For example, while the service provides a great deal of useful features, it suffers from a Web 1.0 look and feel. Perhaps I’ve spent too much time on slick looking sites lately, but MyFavz sure can benefit from a Web 2.0 extreme makeover.

Also, there doesn’t seem to be a way to embed widgets for your wishlists on your websites as you can with some of the other social wishlist services. It’s not a big deal, but people have gotten used to being able to embed their wishlist widgets on their blogs and social networking profiles.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials