Several Facebook gifting applications have relied upon birthdays to get users to interact. But eGifter, an app from GroupGifting.com, wants to change that. The team recently introduced to its app an algorithm to recommend good times to give gifts other than birthdays. For instance, if a friend posts that they’re celebrating a milestone such as a baby, engagement, or new job, eGifter will learn this and recommend a gift.
Today only, we're offering $100 off AllFacebook Marketing Conference and AllTwitter Marketing Conference and $200 off a Combo Pass to attend both events. This offer expires at midnight, so register now with the code ONEDAY and save. 
Boomerang, a platform that allows people to give locally-specialized gifts to Facebook friends, has expanded their services, launching a rewards program — Boomerang Rewards. This allows brands to treat their fans for spreading the word and sharing gifts.
Wrapp, which allows Facebook users to send free and paid electronic gift cards to their friends, has said that three new retailers have joined the fold: Victoria’s Secret, American Apparel, and Little Black Bag. Using Facebook as a platform, Wrapp noted that 1.25 million users of its iOS and Android applications have given 11.5 million digital gift cards — seen by 122 million Facebook users.
Facebook is continuing to push its Gifts program, but this time, users are being prompted to give gifts based on keywords in friends’ status updates. As sister site Inside Facebook discovered, when some users post that they’ve got good news, such as new jobs, their friends can also see a button suggesting that they purchase a Facebook Gift. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to AllFacebook that the prompt is triggered by keywords.
Late last month, Facebook rolled out its Gifts feature to all U.S. users. Now the social network is making sure that users know it’s an option for birthdays. Recently, Facebook tweaked the top-right corner life events notification area to make Gifts a more prominent factor.
As Facebook looks for ways to monetize its presence, the company rolled out Gifts earlier this year — a program that is now available to all U.S. users. But Facebook wasn’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last, to test the social gift market. Several other companies — such as Plumfare, Boomerang, Treater, and GiftHit — use Facebook to deliver experiences that can’t be captured with gift cards.
It has been proven that a marketing message holds so much more weight when it comes from a friend rather than a brand. So how can brands get in on the friend-to-friend connection? Social gifting application Wrapp seems to have this solved. By utilizing sponsored (free) and paid gift cards, Wrapp has excelled at getting brands involved in conversations with friends. Wrapp CEO Hjalmar Winbladh, as well as Gap Sr. Director of Business Strategy Soundar Koneti, spoke at the AllFacebook Marketing Conference in New York about how the company has succeeded with friend-to-friend marketing.
One of the biggest social commerce trends on Facebook — especially leading up to the holidays — is gifting, including through the use of gift cards. Mobile application Gyft takes those plastic gift cards and allows users to scan them and send them to Facebook friends through their smartphones.
The Facebook gifting sector welcomed a new addition Tuesday as social and mobile gifting platform Treater came out of public beta and officially launched, with the help of $2.5 million in seed funding.
“Passively” extracting data from user profiles on social networks has been a head-scratching issue for network owners and marketers alike. It typically makes users feel uncomfortable when targeted ads on social networks seemingly have to do with something that would only be known through their profile information, and such privacy issues make it difficult for advertisers to move beyond this obstacle.
Read more
