5 Comments »Facebook has been slowly rolling out tests to select developers that want to integrate with the Facebook gift shop. As of today there are approximately 5 companies that have been participating in tests: American Greetings, RealGifts, JibJab, GreetBeatz, and someecards. The latter three only recently began showing up in the gift shop. However Facebook has been testing out the gift shop as a platform for developers to sell virtual gifts over the past few months.
Back in August, the company also announced the addition of a number of non-profit companies that have begun using the Facebook gift shop as a way to raise money. Now it appears that many more companies are getting in on the action and while no details have been provided about how open the gift shop platform will become, this new model increases variety for users.
While I’d expect to see more developers in the gift shop, we’ll have to wait and see how quickly they are rolled out. This presents a huge opportunity for developers and as the platform becomes more open and the type of virtual gifts evolves, we’d expect to see this space expand. Just last week there were projections released that the virtual goods market could expand to $6 billion in the by 2013.
At this point that is just estimates but I’d expect Facebook’s gift shop to contribute to a fairly substantial portion of that growth. If Facebook completely opens up their gift shop with the launch of their payments platform, there will be a massive shift of digital transactions taking place on the site. We’ll have to watch as this space evolves, but for now we have three more companies to purchase gifts from on Facebook.
I heart Nick’s posts because he butchers the English language like no other person this side of George W. Bush:
“the virtual goods market could expand to $6 billion in the by 2013.”
Allowing developers’ gifts in the gift store is one thing but what about allowing developers to embed the gift store in their apps? Is this something that we are likely to see soon? My soon-to-launch app would benefit immensely from this.
BTW @Mark, I think you meant ‘hate’ in your comment lol!
I believe that marketing real gifts on Facebook will be the next frontier for developers in this space.
The fact that virtual goods are accepted by a social network as gifts is a small wonder in itself. Just try and imagine this on a normal e-commerce site, where you can buy virtual gifts. NO WAY!! People wouldn’t buy into that, so why are they buying into it on Facebook?
I personally think that it’s a hint to show how well real goods can be traded on Facebook. If I would see 2 of my friends on Facebook buying something in a certain app, the I’d definitely think about it. Especially if those friends sent me a discount coupon to use in that app. I call it social commerce, potentiallly making Facebook bigger than Google in 5 years
You probably think I’m crazy to think that, but just read my blog about the effectiveness of the social web for businesses. http://hhvo.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/the-social-web-is-like-the-offline-world-just-potentially-1000-more-effective/
My wife has her birthday today, what shall I give her
after reading this article, I was really surprised that the virtual gift shop is such a succes. I thought, why would people pay for something that is in fact nothing? Personnaly I send e-cards to friends, but this is not a replacement of a gift. I give gifts when a I come to their parties (pay for a present), and send an e-card when I want to say ‘Happy Birthday’ (no costs).
If the Facebook gift shop combines the virtual presents with charity I would pay for it. In this case, I give the money away and get nothing in return anyway. But I cannot deny that this part of Facebook is expanding. Eventhough I do not believe in it right now, I will be following this topic in the future to be convinced of the real benefits of it.