Virtual Goods News

Viximo today announced a special promotion for its TrueFlirt app on iPhone. Users who download the premium app at the discounted rate of $3.99 on Valentine's Day and send one of the ten pre-installed Flirts to Viximo at 617-460-3269 will receive a $10 iTunes gift card. The offer is limited to the first 500 Flirts received by Viximo on Valentine's Day.

TrueFlirt is a pure virtual gifting platform for iPhone that emphasizes use of the interactive gifts in the course of flirting with other iPhone users. Viximo launched TrueFlirt last month, with the premium version of the app usually retailing for $5.99. There is also a free version that allows user to receive, but not send Flirts. TrueFlirt users can create new Flirts using a mark-up language called VixML, or download additional Flirts by purchasing "Flirt Packs."

A recurring theme in discussions with heads of businesses that sell virtual goods is that when a major holiday hits, sales inevitably go up. As Viximo's TrueFlirt is explicitly romantic, Valentine's Day is probably the single best time of year for the company to try and use a holiday promotion to grow the app's install base. It is very likely that more businesses that deal in the virtual goods model will begin participating in these kind of "user drives" as appropriate holidays come up, hoping to hold on to users who then continue to give gifts on a semi-regular basis.