Amazon has launched the Amazon Birthday Gift, an electronics gift cards service that makes it possible for one or the whole gang to send someone a gift on Facebook.
Users need to link their Amazon account with their Facebook account to use the service. Amazon will be able to collect information about the Facebook account to show the user the upcoming birthdays of friends.
Users can then give a gift by clicking a few buttons and send the gift card with a greeting via the Facebook timeline. The amount of the gift may vary from $1, $5, $10 to $25. Mutual friends can also chip in for the gift. The birthday messages will appear on the celebrant's timeline with links where the Amazon Birthday Gift can be claimed. The gift does not expire and can be redeemed any time.
"Birthdays have always been social occasions, and sites like Facebook now make it possible for anyone around the world to send birthday wishes to friends - with Amazon Birthday Gift, those many individual messages can become a big gift," explained Steve Shure, vice president at Amazon, through a press statement.
"Whether it's your best friend or your old high school teammate, Amazon Birthday Gift lets you join a social gift that will grow as more friends participate, which makes giving and receiving birthday messages on Facebook even more fun," Shure added.
Gift-giving through social platform has shown a lot of potential in the past few years. TechCrunch pointed to similar online services of Walmart that rolled out in 2011 and went full blast before the holiday season in 2012.
The Amazon Birthday Gift service follows the Friends and Family Gifting of the online retail giant that it launched back in December.
Likewise, Facebook also has its own Facebook Gifts that was built on top of the platform built by Karma, a startup firm. The gifting service of the social network is linked to the birthday reminder function of its platform and encourages users to send something aside from their greeting.
Reports show that Facebook Gifts sold around 670,000 gifts in the last quarter of 2012 but with the launch of Amazon Birthday Gifts, the latter will surely get a good chunk from the sales of Facebook.
Check out how Amazon's new feature works:
