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Facebook Gifts

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Re: Facebook Gifts

#61

Post by benburleson »

fletchowns wrote: post #54
boredguy8 wrote: post #24

"It's Mary's birthday in 3 days - send her a birthday cupcake?" I would probably click "yes" if it's Not for every FB 'friend', but there's a 'sufficiently close' threshold where, yes, I'd click that button. Even better if it's day-of fulfillment. And I bet I'm not alone.

Such a convenient way to make an empty and meaningless gesture!

Why would that be empty and meaningless? Sure, it's not much effort, but it's nice to know someone was thinking of you. The fact that it's not free gives it more weight than a simple "Happy Birthday" post.

Re: Facebook Gifts

#62

Post by corwinstephen »

marquis wrote: post #23

"Now you can do something more meaningful" (than a hey, happy birthday call or message). It disappoints me when I hear wording like this, there is nothing more meaningful about paying money for a present that took you two clicks and is probably already part of a pre-selected group of items from their profile/history, than thinking of something to write on their wall in two clicks. All power to Facebook to make it wor…

True, but just because it's not very meaningful doesn't mean people won't use it. We don't live in an ideal world. If we did, nobody would buy prewritten greeting cards or flowers, which are essentially the same thing as a Facebook gift: Something that shows you care without requiring much thought.

Re: Facebook Gifts

#63

Post by corwinstephen »

marquis wrote: post #23

"Now you can do something more meaningful" (than a hey, happy birthday call or message). It disappoints me when I hear wording like this, there is nothing more meaningful about paying money for a present that took you two clicks and is probably already part of a pre-selected group of items from their profile/history, than thinking of something to write on their wall in two clicks. All power to Facebook to make it wor…

True, but just because it's not very meaningful doesn't mean people won't use it. We don't live in an ideal world. If we did, nobody would buy prewritten greeting cards or flowers, which are essentially the same thing as a Facebook gift: Something that shows you care without requiring much thought.

Re: Facebook Gifts

#65

Post by prostoalex »

sidcool wrote: post #15

Facebook as payment system? I still don't have enough confidence on how secure their system is. Also, sharing home address with them is not a smart move.

It's 2012. Credit card companies repeatedly said you're responsible for $0 of unauthorized charges. Vendors have to be PCI-compliant.

What other provisions would make you more comfortable regarding transacting online?

Re: Facebook Gifts

#66

Post by rm999 »

LaGrange wrote: post #6

Oooh, now that's the way to get real names + addresses out of people. Neat. It also involves social pressure -- now not giving away your address will mean rejecting a gift.

Doing anything with addresses is risky from a legal and privacy perspective - I doubt facebook can get away with snailmail spam without permission, for example. Nor do I think they want to do that.

For geographic targeting IPs and user-entered information are usually good enough. Also, as gsharma mentions, facebook has tons of geographic information on users from mobile, which is better because it reflects where you actually spend your time and doesn't go stale.

I doubt facebook will extract much value from physical addresses. Rather, I think this is purely part of their monetization strategy. They can double the average user's contribution to their revenue from a single five dollar purchase. Also, I'm wondering if this is facebook's attempt at building a payments platform. I think this industry will be worth tons of money in the short and long term future.

Re: Facebook Gifts

#67

Post by mmanfrin »

fletchowns wrote: post #54
boredguy8 wrote: post #24

"It's Mary's birthday in 3 days - send her a birthday cupcake?" I would probably click "yes" if it's Not for every FB 'friend', but there's a 'sufficiently close' threshold where, yes, I'd click that button. Even better if it's day-of fulfillment. And I bet I'm not alone.

Such a convenient way to make an empty and meaningless gesture!

Such cynicism.

Re: Facebook Gifts

#69

Post by SCdF »

benburleson wrote: post #61
fletchowns wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a convenient way to make an empty and meaningless gesture!

Why would that be empty and meaningless? Sure, it's not much effort, but it's nice to know someone was thinking of you. The fact that it's not free gives it more weight than a simple "Happy Birthday" post.

They're not thinking of you because Facebook had to remind them.

Try making your birthday private in Facebook one year and see how many happy birthday messages you get when people aren't prodded by Facebook to care. It's a lot less.

Re: Facebook Gifts

#70

Post by gfodor »

I'm super bullish on this. I think this will end up being FB's first big cash cow. I never thought advertising was anything more than a stop-gap to cover costs, Zuck has always hated ads. Personally I thought their big revenue stream would probably be to start charging for FB Connect, but this makes more sense. They are basically hooking in at the right point of intent to convert a user, which is exactly why Google can print piles of money.

This is just step one. Once they get this working they are going to have all kinds of purchasing behavior and really be able to weave their way into all sorts of ecommerce scenarios. Their biggest challenge is going to be fulfillment (you don't want a birthday gift showing up late) so they are probably going to be very selective in who they partner with and are going to roll this out very slowly, since first impressions being good is essential.

Edit: Also there are all kinds of social experiments they can run to optimize conversions with this. If someone you know buys a gift for your friend, you are going to feel more pressure to do so. Etc.

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