Facebook gives us the gift of useless digital crap
I am usually pretty tolerant of seemingly crazy marketing schemes, startup ideas and the like. But the latest offering from Facebook takes the cake. They have just introduced a feature that lets you send “gifts” to your friends, like candy hearts and Teddy bears. “Wow, that’s pretty cool” you might say. “I’d like to click a button on Facebook and have some candy automatically mailed to my girlfriend on Valentine’s Day”, you might think. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg would only scoff “Where have you been these past ten years? This is a social network! Web 2.0! The Information Superhighway! Physical gifts are the way of the past! Digital gifts are the future!”. “And what are these digital gifts”, you may ask? Are they some form of useful intellectual property? A music download or an ebook? Or perhaps an in-game item I can use to advance my character?”. Silly you. Of course not. These Facebook gifts are PICTURES! That’s right, for the low, low price of $1 you can send your sweetheart a PICTURE of a teddy bear. Furthermore, a PICTURE of a teddy bear that she can already view for free if she just clicks on the goddamn gifts link! The only thing you’re paying for is for the same exact picture to appear on her wall!
Is Facebook really hurting in the wallet so much that they have to resort to such idiotic schemes? They are underestimating their audience. I don’t think even a Myspace user would pay a dollar to show a picture of toilet paper on his wall.
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LOL! Hilarious and I agree!
It’s the extension of MMPORGs.
The $1 actually goes to the breast cancer fund, not to facebook.. still a dumb i dea, but its for charity.
Actually, according to TechCrunch, only the February proceeds go to charity. After that, it’s all going in Facebook’s pockets.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/07/facebook-testing-virtual-gifts/
At this rate, we will soon all be raising Neopets on Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg needs the money. His ownership in Facebook is around 30%… and if you take into account the recent $1.6 billion he turned down from Yahoo, he would be sitting pretty with around$500 million. Poor guy, only 22, worth half a bil. He needs all the help he can get.
On a serious note, great blog! I will definitely add you to my list of favorite RSS feeds.
Thanks Nate, I can say the same for your blog
And yeah, Mark Zuckerberg is getting unnecessarily greedy. If he accepted the 500 mil, he would have made more than any of the founders of YouTube.
Hey everyone, this goes to BREAST CANCER, not Mark’s pocket. It’s a charity funds drive.
Sheesh.
What does a box with a hole in it, meant for the insertion of one’s penis (after the SNL skit), have to do with breast cancer? Nothing, kids want to have their fun. I think it woud be clever if it was some sort of an awareness tool, where you realized that you were donating, and it drew some attention to the social issues that surrounded us; a huge step in the right direction for social networking.
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