Facebook is winding down its “Gift Shop” feature, the company announced today. Facebook Gifts will stop operating on August 1, although gifts you’ve received previously will remain on your Wall.
It’s a surprising move from Facebook, which stands to become a significant player in online transactions thanks to Facebook Credits. Given that gifting is a great advertisement for the benefit of making transactions on Facebook, we can only imagine that giving Gifts is wildly unpopular. Facebook Credits perhaps doesn’t need a helping hand, either: The rapid rise of Facebook games has assured the success of the Credits scheme.
If you’re into gifting on Facebook, you still have a few options: Birthday Cards and Pieces of Flair to name a couple.
Facebook’s Jared Morgenstern says of the closedown:
Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts, but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts.
We’ll be able to focus more on improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, games, comments, the “Like” button and the Wall.
RIP, Facebook Gifts.
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