Facebook will remove their “Gift Shop” feature on August 1, ending a program which has allowed users to send pointless presents such as pictures of dogs and virtual flowers to their friends accounts.
Facebook has quickly placed themselves as a big player in the online transactions market with their Facebook Credits option, the removal of the program makes me believe the program has been so wildly unsuccessful that keeping it active would have been more of a distraction than it’s worth.
There’s also a good chance that Facebook wants to focus their “Credits” appeal on Facebook based games and use based application which have created a great deal of revenue for the world’s largest social network.
If you want to send virtual gifts you still have options, including Facebook Birthday Cards and Pieces of Flair among various other developer created applications.
According to Facebook’s Jared Morgenstern:
“Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts, but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts.
We’ll be able to focus more on improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, games, comments, the ‘Like’ button and the Wall.”
The gifts you have already received will remain on your account, however no new gifts can be purchased after August 1st.
Okay so maybe Facebook still wants you to send presents to your friends, just not from their own run application. By all means continue to buy Facebook Credits and use them at will.
What do you think about the closing of the Facebook Gift Shop? Leave us your thoughts.
