The Facebook Gifts feature was supposed to kill Amazon or blow up the world or something. The place reminding you of your best friend’s birthday could also help you get a gift and then publicly show off what a great friend you were for remembering and buying a gift. Genius.
But Facebook Gifts have only been doing so-so. Maybe because buying someone a Facebook gift kind of implies that you forgot to actually get them something. Subtext! So Facebook is cutting costs and is only going to be selling gift card codes and its own multi-use gift card credit. The codes will be instantly redeemable so Facebook can save on shipping costs and keep overhead low.
The change probably won’t be that noticeable to consumers, since only 20% of total Gift sales have been for physical products, according to TechCrunch. The Gifts page is going to have its own URL instead of just overlaying, and it will include a much stronger emphasis on recommendations. You have to be in kind of rough shape to resort to a Facebook Gift, but no judgement. I mean we’re all gonna be watching on Facebook. But seriously you do you. [TechCrunch]