Facebook has a revenue problem that it may have solved a portion of recently.
The company announced a new function today called Facebook Gift where you will get a friendly reminder that you have a friend with a birthday, and you should send them a gift. When you buy a gift through Facebook the company gets a cut of the revenue.
This is a much preferred model of earning revenue compared to banner ads like Facebook has now. A vast majority of those ads are meaningless to users, and a majority of clicks on those ads are alleged to be by bots that are designed to milk advertisers.
I prefer to buy gifts for my friends because I know them not because a social media site says to, but that doesn’t mean Facebook’s stock price won’t go up.
Make sure you don’t spend too much money on those gifts. Track how much you spend with some of these great articles:
Money Saving Enthusiast | Deciding What to Spend Money on as a Key to Happiness? Choose an Experience |
NPR’s Planet Money | They Won’t Tell You Their Names, But They’ll Help You Hide Your Money
Narrow Bridge Finance | The Benefits and Hidden Costs of Loyalty Programs
Get Rich Slowly | How to Pick the Best Darned Account
One Money Design | 6 Ways a Blog Can Help Your Finances
Five Cent Nickel | Eyes on the Prize: The Path to Early Retirement
Frugal Portland | 20 Things to Do (and Not Do!) Before 2012 Ends
Consumerism Commentary | 6 Tips for Using New Disposable Income
YouTube | TEDxHuntsville – Daniel Crosby – Sex, Funds, & Rock N’ Roll
Bloomberg | Ferrari to Lamborghini Can’t Outrun Crisis as Sales Slow
Wealthy Turtle | 50 Personal Finance Blogs You Had Better Be Reading
DailyPerk | DIY Halloween Costumes: Almost as Good as the Candy
Don’t Mess With Taxes | 10 easy tax deductions for bloggers and other online businesses
Free From Broke was featured in the following carnivals this year:
Dewey’s Treehouse: Festival of Frugality #355: The What, We Worry? Edition
Carnival Of Personal Finance: First Week Of Fall Edition
Seems like that should definitely help out Facebook’s revenue. Give it a few months for users to get used to it and I bet it’ll start catching on… unfortunately.
I always wondered what that little present was next to the name. I figured it was the old icon that used to mean that you could put some other icon on your friend’s wall, like a .gif of kiss lips or a puppy. I didn’t know you could actually buy them real stuff through Facebook! That seems kind of like an uneccesary use of the middle man.