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"If anecdotal evidence is to be believed, men are notoriously bad gift-givers. Seattle-based startup Thoughtful launches its social gifting private beta product Tuesday \u2014 just ahead of Valentine's Day \u2014 to help save the day.\nThe premise is simple enough: Men need help buying gifts; Thoughtful connects to Facebook to surface local experiences and gift recommendations that match their mates' tastes. \nThoughtful curates gifts sourced from local merchants who work with the startup to feature their products and experiences. Gifts start at $25 and include affordable spa options or much pricer fare: clothing, accessories, Valentine's Day dinners and romantic weekend getaways.\nThe service will continue to keep track of important birthdays, anniversaries, and special events and will follow up with reminders to ensure the user's gift-buying plans are prepared accordingly. \n\n\n\n\n\u201CGuys don\u2019t shop \u2014 they buy,\u201D says CEO Chris Lynch. \u201CThere are a million places to shop online, but what most of us guys struggle with is having a good idea and then easily making it happen. Our app is built to recommend the perfect gift this year so that you can be the hero.\u201D\nWhile Thoughtful is targeted at men, the service will work for women as well. To say the fairer sex is the more thoughtful sex is a gender generalization that doesn't always apply.\nThougtful, for now, is restricted to beta users in the Seattle area, which means not all men can become Thoughtful \"heros\" overnight. The service plans to expand elsewhere in the future, but for now Mashable readers in the Seattle area can gain priority access by entering \"Mashable\" in the location field at signup.\nThoughtful is both a consumer and local merchant play, and part recommendation engine. It connects the dots between the three in a way that is unique from the multitude of daily deals sites already in existence. In November of 2010, Thoughtful closed an undisclosed round of seed financing and will go after additional funds later in the year.\nPhoto based on an image courtesy of iStockphoto, madtwinsis."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/01/31/thoughtful/>