Last night, at their Gifts event in NYC (the one rescheduled due to Hurricane Sandy), Facebook announced new partners for the ecommerce initiative as well as a global expansion of it that will see it roll out to millions more users.
According to Facebook, users will be able to send a variety of types of gifts through the platform. Of course, there are gadgets, clothes, cosmetics, books, and food to give. Facebook says that some new partners include babyGap, Fab, Brookstone, Dean & Deluca,L’Occitane, Lindt, ProFlowers, Random House, Inc. and NARS Cosmetics. But users will also be able to gift media to their friends through subscriptions to Hulu Plus, Pandora, Rdio, and more.
For the adults in your life, you’ll also be able to give wine from Robert Mondavi and Chandon via Facebook.
Facebook says that even more retail partners will be announced over the coming weeks.
So, Facebook Gifts is rounding out its partners and growing more robust by the second. The next big question is of course, when? When will the majority of Facebook users have access to the Gifts platform? Up until now, it’s only been available to a small number of users. Facebook says that they will continue to roll it out to users over the coming weeks.
When Gifts finally comes to your profile, you can expect every user’s profile to sport a Gifts button, making it easy to send gifts with a single click. This button will exist on both desktop and mobile. You can also expect some sort of recommendation engine, which suggests gifts based on what’s popular among users of a similar demographic set as the recipient.
Facebook recently updated their iOS app to provide Gifts support. They also announced the ability for users to give gifts to charity in their friends’ names through the Gifts platform. Facebook is getting into this game at the right time, as the holiday season is just getting underway. Because of that, we expect that most users will have access to Gifts sooner rather than later.