Online Secret Santa Goes Live in Time for Holiday Season

Online Secret Santa Goes Live in Time for Holiday Season

Availability of Free Online Gift Exchange GuessList.com(TM) to Automate Selections and Relieve Time Burden Associated with Manual Process

NEW YORK, Dec. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- With a third of all offices preparing for a secret gift exchange this holiday season, forget drawing names out of a hat and ending up with the same name as last year. Today's launch of GuessList.com offers co-workers, family, and friends an easier and more organized approach to this year's Secret Santa. RIDDLE (Random Indexing & Distribution for Data List Elements), GuessList.com's patent pending randomization technology, will ensure for the first time that you can avoid last year's match automatically.

"I always dread organizing the office Secret Santa at this time of the year," said Carolyn Nanfra, an executive assistant at Mount Sinai Hospital. "It's a real time burden and it gets difficult for everybody to avoid drawing the same name as last year or the year before that. GuessList.com makes the whole process a lot easier because the technology not only avoids repeat matches but also allows me to deal with sensitive issues, like how much to spend, without embarrassing anyone."

GuessList.com supports Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and general holiday themes. The service allows the event organizer to enter a variety of information including matches that should be avoided, details on when and where the exchange will take place, and a minimum and maximum price for gifts. GuessList.com will then, at the organizer's request, send out an email invitation to all participants in the event. The invitation contains all the relevant information -- similar to an online party invitation -- asking the invitees to RSVP, to provide a wish list, and to add comments. Once the invitees RSVP, the organizer prompts GuessList.com to send out the secret matches. GuessList.com is the first online gift exchange that guarantees not to repeat the previous year's matches.

Co-founder Paolo Yuvienco came up with the idea after his own family Secret Santa became a burden due to location restrictions and the amount of time it was taking to organize, "I was tired of the back and forth over the phone with my family who are spread all over the country," Yuvienco commented. "The success of evite.com(i) and other online invitation programs convinced me to develop an online solution for our annual Secret Santa. With more than 69% of US adults now online and 33% of employees participating in an office gift exchange(ii), we anticipate a rapid adoption of this tool over the holiday season."

About GuessList.com

Established in 2004, GuessList.com is a free, online gift exchange management service. As a unique service with great features, GuessList.com is not only dedicated to making gift exchange events very simple to create and manage, but most of all lots of fun! From Secret Santa (aka Kris Kringle) to White Elephant to Yankee Swap, GuessList.com eliminates the process of 'drawing names out of a hat', automatically matching friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances. The turnkey, user-friendly service helps create your event, sends out customized email invitations and reminders, randomly assigns all members of your gift exchange a secret gift-giver, and even helps users shop for secret recipients. GuessList.com is a registered trademark. For further information please visit http://www.guesslist.com/ .

(i) Evite is part of IAC Local and Media Services, an operating business
of IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI)
(ii) Harris Interactive



Source: GuessList.com

CONTACT: Faina Kouperman of GuessList.com, +1-917-922-2259, or
faina@guesslist.com

Web site: http://www.guesslist.com/


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