Virtual Reality: Buying Real Gifts Now Possible on Facebook
In addition to sending notifications for friends’ birthdays, Facebook will be launching an application that will allow users to purchase items and gifts for their friends in local currency, the company announced last week.
Ranging from food to accessories, the new application will enable Facebook users to send real presents along with birthday greetings beginning Thursday. The service will initially be available in the United States, spreading out incrementally to international locations later on.
Gifts will be delivered to recipients within days after the sender pays via credit card and the shipping address is provided offline. Gift-givers have the option to send presents privately or post it on the recipient’s timeline. Either way, the recipient can preview the present online.
As a starter, users can choose from a number of consumer good options such as 35 dollar-cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery, a box of Frog Hollow Farms fruits at $54, and stylish nonprescription sunglasses from New York firm Warby Parker, which retail at $95 each.
Developed by budding San Francisco company Karma, the gift-giving tool will up the ante for all Facebook transactions, a company whose commercial transactions used to be limited to those within virtual games and applications. Part of the proceeds of every successful sale goes to Facebook, although a spokesperson from the company refused to disclose exact figures, stating that revenue-sharing agreements vary per merchant.
Partner merchants are generally optimistic about this latest Facebook platform. Warby Parker co-chief executive Dave Gilboa said that if this first-time partnership reveals a strong “engagement from consumers, then we would feel more comfortable building a real Facebook storefront and allowing people to transact using Facebook.”
Much of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertisements sold on the website, with commercial transactions comprising only a small portion of its total generated income. This venture is said to provide an alternate revenue source for the social networking giant, whose Wall Street share price has been staggering during the past few months. Whether it will indeed create profit for the company or not is yet to be confirmed, just as we’ve yet to find out if Facebook users trust and support the company enough to shell out cash on the tool.
