In 2005, boyfriend (now hubby) and I were driving to spend the holidays with his family. Lots of siblings, and spouses, no kids, and everyone was buying gifts for eachother. The wishlist sites at the time were rudimentary - I remember wishing we could filter to unreserved items, and gift partial amounts towards bigger gifts, instead of trying to filter to trinkets on a budget. At the time I told myself, surely Amazon would do this soon enough and being pestered by the problem every giving occasion. Fast forward 10 years later, and nobody had done anything about it still. Wishlists were done by retailers in a way that benefits retailers and not even the least bit the wisher. On one occasion, my husband’s wishlist link on a major online retailer was showing feminine products ?!?! It turned out that the retailer had decided to default everyone’s wishlists to a “recommended products” list with high margin trinkets from that retailer. To top it off our baby registry was showing off on google results. Look it up now - google a retail brand and your first name and see how many people’s registries you will be able to see - many with their address showing up too (especially for baby registries).
So I’d had enough and decided to build https://www.dreamlist.com for our baby shower and beyond. Now I’m adding all kinds of features for families and features for love, and partial contributions to larger gifts, and collaborative shopping. The sky is the limit. Competitors become stores and pummel you with ads, but I’m thinking of doing SAAS for Love instead - from personal memories preservation for loved ones to personal CRM, etc. The more my kids grow the more value I see in this kind of differentiation - having a product of a different caliber ready for them to use when they become of age, without advertising and the manipulative crud that comes with it. Ping me if you are interested in this space or have ideas.