The site calls itself "part blog, part magazine and part bookmarking tool," and is very similar to Pinterest with an increased focus on buying stuff, taking a 10 percent cut for all transactions. It is backed by cofounders of Facebook, Twitter and other investment firms including Andreessen Horowitz.
Business Insider reports:
There is no signed deal and no guarantee one will happen. We do not know the price Apple has proposed to pay for The Fancy or how recently talks took place.
However, given what we've learned, it was apparently no coincidence that Einhorn and Apple CEO Tim Cook met at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley conference earlier this year. The notoriously private Cook, who does not visibly participate in any well-known social media sites, started using The Fancy shortly afterwards.
Its latest valuation was pegged at $100 million, indicating the price Apple might have to pay to acquire The Fancy.
The Fancy has apps for iOS and Android, with reviewers appreciating the ease of discovering and buying products from the app.
Business Insider notes that the acquisition would allow customers to buy products directly through Apple, putting the more than 400 million iTunes accounts tied with credit card info to good use. Apple could also integrate an e-commerce layer into iOS, just like it built an advertising layer with iAds.
By making the procedure to buy products insanely simple, Apple could create an ecosystem similar to the App Store, exposing a lot more products to consumers thus increasing their willingness to spend. Speculating further, this could be the real world parallel to in-app purchases, enabling developers to sell not just virtual goods but actual products as well.
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