Social networking giant Facebook Thursday announced a new service, Facebook Gifts, where users can buy and send presents to their friends.
The gifts sent by the users are not virtual gifts but actual gifts which will be delivered to their doorstep.
Facebook is venturing into e-commerce business with this initiative. The company is adding one more avenue for revenue building, trying to impress upon the investors.
The process of sending is very simple. Users have to go to their friend's timeline and click on Gift to pick an item. They can select a card and attach a personal message to it. Once the gift is sent, the person to whom the gift is sent can choose to accept the gift or decline it. If they accept it, the gift will "unwrap."
The user can choose a different color, or size of the gift. They can also "swap" it from a gift that is prized same. The price of the gift will be hidden from the fiends. Users can either pay when they send the gift or when the friend enters his shipping address, said Facebook in their Help Center.
Initially, Facebook's gift service is available only in the U.S. and it will be slowly expanded to other countries.
Items like cookies, T-shirts, household goods and posters can be sent to the friends on special occasions like birthdays. In case the recipient does not enter the billing address within two weeks, the gift order will be deemed cancelled and the money paid will be refunded.
Gift items can be exchanged within 30 days if the size does not fit or if the product is damaged. This service branches out from Facebook's May acquisition of Karma, a social-gifting mobile app.
"This acquisition combines Karma's passion and innovative mobile app with Facebook's platform to help people connect and share in new and meaningful ways," the company said reports the Los Angeles Times.
This feature will also be available on the mobile platform. Facebook announced that it is a mobile company.
Facebook has to face the competition from Amazon and eBay and existing gift apps like Wrapp and Bomerang. Now it is for the Facebook users to decide how they use the new service.
