{"id":445724,"date":"2010-03-19T03:00:03","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T07:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.wordpress.com\/?p=107126"},"modified":"2010-03-19T03:00:03","modified_gmt":"2010-03-19T07:00:03","slug":"gift-card-exchange-plastic-jungle-gets-7-4m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/445724","title":{"rendered":"Gift Card Exchange Plastic Jungle Gets $7.4M"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\"  src=\"http:\/\/gigaom.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/03\/itunes_giftcard.jpg?w=185&#038;h=119\" alt=\"itunes_giftcard.jpg\" width=\"185\" height=\"119\" class=\"alignleft\" \/> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plasticjungle.com\/pjweb\/\">Plastic Jungle<\/a>, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company that runs a gift card exchange, says it has raised $7.4 million in a round led by Redpoint Ventures with participation from previous investors Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital and Bay Partners. The company raised $6 million in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>Plastic Jungle is one of the many companies trying to solve the problems around the gift card economy, as I highlighted <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2010\/03\/01\/can-cardpool-solve-the-unused-gift-card-problem\/\">in my post about<\/a> CardPool, a San Francisco-based, very early-stage startup. According <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/12\/12\/your-money\/credit-and-debit-cards\/12money.html\">to some estimates<\/a>, nearly $5 billion worth of cards go <a href=\"http:\/\/www.towergroup.com\/research\/news\/news.htm?newsId=5500\">unclaimed every year<\/a>. It allows consumers to get cash for unwanted gift cards for up to 92 percent of the unused balance and buy gift cards at up to a 30 percent discount.<\/p>\n<p>In the 2009-2010 holiday season, Plastic Jungle saw 450 percent year-over-year revenue growth. The company gets 118,000 monthly visitors to its web site and is growing at about 60 percent per month.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/stats.wordpress.com\/b.gif?host=gigaom.com&#038;blog=1149864&#038;post=107126&#038;subd=gigaom&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?a=p57h7vm2Xm0:x60BRgJNDuY:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?a=p57h7vm2Xm0:x60BRgJNDuY:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?i=p57h7vm2Xm0:x60BRgJNDuY:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?a=p57h7vm2Xm0:x60BRgJNDuY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?i=p57h7vm2Xm0:x60BRgJNDuY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?a=p57h7vm2Xm0:x60BRgJNDuY:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?a=p57h7vm2Xm0:x60BRgJNDuY:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?i=p57h7vm2Xm0:x60BRgJNDuY:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/OmMalik\/~4\/p57h7vm2Xm0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plastic Jungle, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company that runs a gift card exchange, says it has raised $7.4 million in a round led by Redpoint Ventures with participation from previous investors Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital and Bay Partners. The company raised $6 million in 2009. Plastic Jungle is one of the many companies trying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":674,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/674"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}