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Facebook Looks For More Non-Advertising Revenues
Silicon Alley Insider —
... So this past weekend, the social network doubled down on one of its quirkiest revenue streams: Facebook gifts. They are those icons that sometimes pop up in your News Feed. Users give them to each other and pay Facebook $1 for the privilege. ...
In bid for international money, Facebook takes gifts off dollar standard
VentureBeat —
... It’s the latest step to bolstering this promising but often under-appreciated revenue stream. Outside estimates have pegged Facebook’s revenue from gifts to be between $30 million and $40 million this year, but the company has said such estimates are “very rough” and don’t fully account for all the revenue coming in via gifts. This revenue could get into the nine figures next year, Justin Smith of the blog Inside Facebook calculates, based on various estimates he tells me he’s heard. Smith is the head product ...
Facebook, Eager to Grow its Gifting Platform, Launches Birthday Notification Service
Inside Facebook —
... Just two weeks ago, Facebook revamped its virtual currency system used for purchasing Facebook gifts. While they may appear minor at first, the changes enabled a more flexible pricing model designed to both 1) allow for increased variety in inventory “quality,” and 2) increase the total volume of gifts sold. ...
Facebook Pushing Birthday Virtual Gifts on Profile Pages
Inside Facebook —
... The move comes after Facebook revamped its gift store in early November, moving to a virtual credits system to more easily allow for variably priced inventory. Since then, Facebook has increased promotion of its virtual gifts on the home page. All of the gifts shown by default in Facebook’s new profile page promotion cost 100 credits ($1). ...
Facebook Continues Build Out of Gifting Business with Scheduled Birthday Gifts
Inside Facebook —
... , the company changed its currency system from dollars to virtual credits in November. Given all the work the company has done to push birthday virtual gift giving, Facebook’s virtual gifts revenues should substantially increase this year. ...
AdNectar Building a Sponsored Virtual Gifts Network for Facebook App Developers
Inside Facebook —
... do with a traditional banner ad. The best part is, it’s all voluntary. The user chooses to send the virtual item because they enjoy doing so.”
AdNectar estimates that 5 million virtual gifts are sent each day on Facebook - 90% of which are sent through Facebook applications. Facebook has been building out its in-house virtual gifting business lately, having recently launched new features like scheduled birthday gifts and holiday gifts. Late last year, it converted its virtual gifting economy to a “credits” system from US dollars. ...
Facebook Considering Virtual Currency System?
Inside Facebook —
... Universal virtual currency, however, could make a lot of sense for Facebook, especially given the recent “virtual credits” system that was introduced in Facebook’s own virtual gifting system. In this scenario, users would buy blocks of Facebook virtual currency directly, and then be able to use them in various ways in both Facebook’s own virtual gifts store or in third party applications. Hi5 announced a similar ...
Facebook Experimenting With Virtual Currency Gifting in the Feed
Inside Facebook —
... It was only a few months ago that Facebook converted its gifting currency from real dollars to virtual credits in an effort to lay the groundwork for the expansion of its virtual gifting business. Now, Facebook is experimenting with a new way for users to give the virtual credits they have purchased to friends in response to content they share in the feed. The pilot program has been launched at a few college campuses, the Facebook company network, and the VentureBeat company network, where ...
Facebook Platform Payment Providers Report Strong Growth in Q1
Inside Facebook —
... Nevertheless, Facebook has still been experimenting with its own virtual currency, “Facebook credits,” which are used to buy Facebook Gifts and paid for via credit card in the Facebook Gift Shop. Facebook is rumored to have done between ...
Facebook to Adjust Exchange Rate for Facebook Credits
Inside Facebook —
... Since migrating to a credit-based currency system last fall, Facebook has been testing a variety of initiatives with its virtual currency, including ...
Confirmed: Facebook Expanding Gift Shop to Include Virtual and Physical Goods from Developers Tonight
Inside Facebook —
We’ve covered the evolution of Facebook’s virtual gifts extensively on Inside Facebook over the last couple of years, but tonight we’re hearing that Facebook is about to start testing a major new expansion to the Gift Shop that will integrate items from third party developers. The move will expand Facebook’s merchant platform beyond the “Pay with Facebook” tests that are running inside a few applications and, for the first time, integrate a variety of third party virtual gifts into the Facebook Gift Shop. In ...
Facebook Considered Buying TipJoy, Continues Social Commerce Experiments
Inside Facebook —
We’re still in the early phases of Facebook’s build-out of the commerce side of its business, but it’s clear that between recent test launches of its payment service for developers, Facebook Credits virtual currency initiatives, and last week’s gift shop merchant program, Facebook is thinking a lot about the future of social commerce. Recently, the team hired Prashant Fuloria from Google to manage its payments initiatives, and the company is looking to hire more people to help run its e-commerce programs. ...
A Running Summary of Facebook’s Virtual Currency Tests
Inside Facebook —
... 1. Facebook Exchanges Dollars for Credits ...
Facebook Expands Virtual Goods Business with Licensed Music and Sports Gifts
Inside Facebook —
... expansion of the virtual goods economy in the US (see our recently released research report: Inside Virtual Goods), the explosion of the virtual goods market on the Facebook Platform has been nothing short of remarkable this year. However, while Facebook hasn’t focused on its own direct virtual goods business as much as it has growing its brand and performance advertising businesses, it has been steadily rolling out more features over the last year, including its own virtual currency, designed to lay the groundwork for Facebook’s future e-commerce ...
