Los Angeles – With barely two weeks left for the festivity to begin, and just in time for some last-minute gift-giving season, Facebook has just rolled out its Gifts products to everyone in the U.S.
The social networking giant Facebook today unwrapped its new Gifts feature to all of its users in the U.S. just in time for the holiday season. The service, which permits users to buy presents for their friends through the social hub, has been tested by tens of millions of members over the past two months.
“With Gifts, you can instantly send your friends real gifts through Facebook. Select a gift from categories like Food & Drink, Home & Kitchen, Baby & Kids, and now Wine,” says Facebook.
Facebook Gifts had been in a soft launch period since the new initiative was announced back in late September. Since then, Facebook constantly made Gifts available to more and more users – as they continued to add new retail partners and features. Now, the service is accessible via facebook.com/gifts or through the “buy a gift” link on your friends’ Timelines on the top-right bar. It has been rolling out slowly to Facebook’s U.S. users, and is now available nationwide.
With the U.S. launch today, users can select gifts from over 100 retail partners, as well as virtual subscriptions from Hulu, Pandora, Rdio, and more. Users can choose an item for a friend, select a virtual card, write a message and send it through Facebook. The recipient is notified about the gift, and after reading the card and seeing a preview of the item, he or she enters a mailing address. This makes it so that the gift-giver does not need to know where to have the package sent. Facebook handles the shipping and uses notifications to help users track the progress of the delivery.
However, with several options, if you wish to give a friend a gift from desktop or mobile, simply head to their Timeline and you will find the option next to the “post” and “photo” options. Facebook has also included the gift box logo inside birthday reminders (on both desktop and mobile) – for obvious reasons. Also, users can give gifts to charity in their friends’ names, and the company just recently added iTunes gift cards to the product.
Since its launch in late September, the billion-user strong social media giant has wooed an impressive list of partners, which includes prominent names like babyGap, Brookstone, Dean & Deluca and Random House. Other charitable partners include the American Red Cross, Blue Star Families, Boys & Girls Club of America, DonorsChoose.org, Girls Inc., Kiva, Livestrong, Oxfam America, RAINN, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, and Water.org.
So far, the social media outfit has not publicly talked about plans to expand internationally. However, last month the company added a job listing for a customs and trade manager, which is likely related to making Gifts available more globally.
On a positive note, Facebook believes the new feature will leverage the countless birthday wishes and words of congratulations exchanged daily and hopes the extra income will supplement its advertising and gaming revenue, just as its stock price has started to gain steam after a troubled IPO.