Fab Launches New iPhone and iPad Apps - East Idaho News
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Fab Launches New iPhone and iPad Apps

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iPhone5?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1350007436400Apple(NEW YORK) — The shopping website Fab, launched 16 months ago. By July 2012 it had five million members and now has 7.5 million users.

The e-commerce site has everything from clothes, home furnishings, gadgets, stuff for kids, food and even pets. But it’s not only the products and selection that has made Fab so popular, two tech components have been central to the success: social media and mobile.

“Fifty percent of our members are buying through their mobile phones,” Fab CEO Jason Goldberg told ABC News in an interview Wednesday. “With that we challenged ourselves to think beyond the existing apps and to start from scratch to build something for the very mobile users.”

The new Fab apps for the iPhone and iPad have been given a fresh coat of paint. Both apps let you swipe from the left to reveal a toolbar and you can see different tabs, including the latest items added to the site, popular items, and things that are popular with your friends.

“We wanted to present an experience that is design-worthy as the products we sell. We want people to think of Fab as a place to check out every day, to see what is new,” Goldberg said.

It’s that “latest” feed, which gives the site and app a newsy feel, and social media integration that has also been key to the service’s fast growth.

According to Goldberg, over 50 percent of the users have joined the site from social sharing. You can login with Facebook to the shopping site, easily share items you like with friends, see what your Facebook friends like, and even use Facebook’s new Collections feature on Facebook itself.

Goldberg says it is working on an Android app, but it simply doesn’t see the same demand from Android users. “We do have an Android app, but we find that only two percent of our usage is on Android. We wish we had more Android usage,” he explained.

The new Fab apps for the iPhone and iPad will hit the App Store on Thursday.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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