Facebook is clearly focused on their gifting business. Recently the company made a small modification which increased birthday gift promotions on your friends’ profiles. Tonight Facebook rolled out a new Valentine’s day promotion. When you visit any of your friends’ profiles you are instantly prompted with the option of sending a Valentine’s day gift to that friend.
The gift will be revealed to your friend at midnight on Valentine’s day. There is then a large number of Valentine’s day themed gifts. From troll dolls, to thongs, to cakes, to Valentine’s day ninjas? I’m honestly not sure what the ninja is about but there are also a couple of branded gifts in there including a Honda heart love meter and a Cover Girl lips gift.
It’s not surprising to see the company increasing its promotion of holiday themed gifts. I’m guessing that we’ll see a lot more of these types of promotions in the near future. As Facebook continues to search for a more effective monetization model, virtual gifts are providing a sizeable revenue stream. By some estimates Facebook’s virtual gifts business reaches the tens of millions of dollars.
Asia, in contrast to the United States, has a long history of virtual goods on social networks as advertising revenue is not as strong outside of this country. It’s great to see Facebook pushing their virtual goods and I can only hope that they’ll continue to promote these goods in the future as it easily can help cover the cost of a couple thousand servers!
