Apple is contemplating buying The Fancy, a social e-commerce website.
The Business Insider reported Apple is in discussions to acquire the New York-based, fast growing startup, The Fancy, which is backed by co-founders of Twitter and Facebook.
The site describes itself as "part store, blog, magazine and wish." It is similar to Pinterest as it lets its users make a wish-list but the difference is it lets people buy them through its site. The site gets a 10 percent cut to the purchases made.
The objective for Apple is it will get a foothold in the growing e-commerce market. It will be able to market more products onto its user base via Apple's iTunes stores to work shopping, with Apple getting a cut for it.
The Fancy's biggest rival is Pinterest, but Pinterest is not involved in e-commerce. Facebook that lets retailers set up shopfronts on its website, but it has not yet yielded the result it should have.
"Social networks, themselves, try to monetise their user base, but I think it's interesting if Apple starts dabbling there, as well. People are used to spending money with Apple, and not so much on Facebook," said Foad Fadaghi, director, Telsyte research in an interview to ZDNet. "Facebook is a social platform for interacting with family and friends, not somewhere you'd think off the top of your head to go purchase something from; and that is one of the biggest differences."
There has been no confirmation about the acquisition yet, but Joe Einhorn, founder, The Fancy met Tim Cook, ceo, Apple earlier this year at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley conference and soon after this meet Cook started using The Fancy.
The company raised $10 million last fall and $6 million in 2010 said the SEC filing.
Investors for this startup include: Jack Dosey, Twitter cofounder and Chris Hughes, Facebook co-founder sit on the board; LeRoy Kim of Allen & Co., James Pllotta, owner of Boston Celtics; Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz co-founders and others.
Apple is not known to make big acquisitions but it has bought several companies like Lala.com, online music service; Chomp, app search engine; Placebase, a digital mapping company and is also trying to acquire AuthenTec, a mobile security company.
Though, Apple has a history of e-commerce initiatives from iTunes Music Store in 1997 to its iPhone App Store, and PassBook an online wallet. The Fancy will give Apple a way to convert people's interest into a purchase. It will be a big step for Apple into the online shopping sector.
