DUBLIN, IRELAND — (Marketwire) — 01/15/13 — Keep a New Year-s resolution in 2013, and be a better friend! announced today the launch of its , the first-ever mobile app that allows you to send real, printed birthday cards, ready-personalized with your friends- and family-s Facebook photos, straight from the palm of your hand to anywhere in the world.
For its more than one billion users, Facebook plays a significant role in today-s birthdays. It reminds people of friends- and family-s birthdays — whose is today and whose is coming up — and even provides a way to send an effortless greeting with a wall post. But Cleverbug does one better by using these birthday-focused Facebook features to automatically create timely, relevant and fun greeting cards, eliminating the toiling in card aisles and last-minute trip to the post office for stamps. By harnessing Facebook-s social graph, Cleverbug brings the whole process to users- fingertips with a ready-personalized printed card, in just a few taps.
“Everyone who uses Cleverbug sees a unique, personalized store of cards that has been built according to their friends, family connections, relationships, photos and Facebook activity,” said Kealan Lennon, Cleverbug Founder and CEO. “With purchasing on smartphones doubling in the last year, Cleverbug is at the forefront of a massive trend in mobile commerce — giving them new ways to connect with a timeless tradition. Cleverbug is poised to fundamentally disrupt the $27 billion greeting card industry, and the long-term vision is to become the world-s largest personalized, mobile greeting card marketplace on the planet.”
Once logged in via Facebook, the app selects relevant photos and card designs for the user, using intelligent algorithms to distinguish relationships and photo manipulation technology to incorporate photos into the design. Photo selection is based on the relationship between the user and recipient, as well as tagging and the recipient-s most -liked- photos. Alternative photos can be selected from Facebook albums, the iPhone Camera Roll and a snapshot taken right then.
The finished product is a meaningful pairing of beautifully designed card templates and the memories and experiences documented within Facebook. Upon completion and purchase ($2.99 plus postage) the card is printed within 24 hours and mailed anywhere in the world with standard postage costs. The cards can either be sent directly to the recipient, or sent back to the user with a separate envelope to be delivered in person. Additionally, the digital versions of the cards can be shared on the recipient-s Facebook Timeline among other birthday greetings.
To help jumpstart Cleverbug-s greater vision for both users and brand partners, Nick Ruotolo, former President of the European business unit of , now a top 25 global eCommerce company, joined the company-s board on January 2, 2013.
“For the past several years, innovation in the online print industry has lagged far behind the prevailing social and mobile trends. Recently, companies have been trying to incorporate a social component into their offerings, but Cleverbug is the first company to realize the full potential of leveraging the social graph in a mobile print app,” Ruotolo said. “Cleverbug brings the recipients- life experiences, memories, and personal relationships into the card and its message. In no other instance have greeting cards been this personal, this timely, and this heartwarming. With Cleverbug, birthdays are special again.”
Cleverbug is a free app and available for download in the on iPhone and iPad devices.
Cleverbug is a mobile app that allows you to send real, printed birthday cards, personalized with your friends- and family-s Facebook photos, straight from your mobile phone to anywhere in the world. Based in Dublin, Ireland, and San Francisco, CA, Cleverbug raised $2.5m seed capital in 2011 led by Delta Partners, Ireland-s largest venture capital firm. Cleverbug is now available for download in the iTunes App Store.
Lisa Picasso for Cleverbug
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