The Gifts Project: group gifts on Facebook

in News by Gal Mor — July 19, 2010 at 4:00 pm | 6 comments

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The Facebook Gift Shop is closing on August 1st, as the site decided to focus instead on improving other products. Out of the Gift Shop’s “gift credits” came the virtual currency, Facebook Credits, that now makes it easier for people to buy premium items across the many games and applications on Facebook.

Gifts on Facebook have  a big pro: you don’t need to know the person’s address to send them a real gift. The service makes it easy to integrate birthday, anniversary  and holiday shopping right into the social network. Services like Dashgift and Best Friends Gifts offer the option of purchasing real gifts for quite a while. The Gifts Project application tries a different direction. It is a social commerce platform that enables users to give and receive group gifts. This Groupon meets Facebook model is not unique: Wisheo and others are trying their luck in this direction as well without Hugh success so far.

However, the developers, Appchee Applications, an Israeli startup company founded in 2009 which is backed by Dr. Yossi Vardi, are hoping  people will use this social platform to share their special occasions with family and friends by actively participating in a Group Gift without stretching their budget.

The micropayment platform enables friends to share their special occasions with family and friends by actively participating in buying a Group Gift without stretching their budget.

A bachelorette party is coming up? Your good friend has a birthday? Your colleague at work is getting married? With the Gift Project you can set up a new Group Gift for your friend or yourself and invite others to participate by Facebook or Email. The Organizer picks anything he wants for his birthday or set up a Group Gift for his friend’s. Family, co-workers and other groups of friends can chip in with any amount, but the minimum is $1. The contribution is confidential, so you can pay only a buck and your friends will still see you as a generous fellow you are! If you insist on chipping in without actually paying, you can use the ‘Earn Cash’ option and fill a survey or play a game to win money.

Shipping and handling 5% fee is included in the total price of the Group Gift, therefore it is divided between all the friends who participate in the gift. At this stage gifts price is limited to $300 per order to maximize the chance you’ll get your gift on time for the occasion. You can choose from a variety of products from many online retailers. As soon as the group-gift is complete, The Gift Project will deliver it to the recipient’s house.

The Gift Project offers gift cards as well and you can purchase a card with any amount you want starting from as low as $5. Using The Gifts Project is free for everyone. You can start as many gifts as you want and all payment transactions are safely and securely handled by Gate2shop.

If the gift isn’t fully complete on the occasion date, the receiver will get a gift card with the accumulated amount as long as it’s above $5. With this gift card, she can choose any gift out of many choices. The Gifts Project ships gifts U.S. domestically only at this point, but the founders say they have plans on expanding soon.

Just a reminder: The Gift Project is a Facebook application, which means you and your friends or family must install it on Facebook before you can start a group or chip in. However, you will see status updates from this application by your friends even if you didn’t install it.

Read more about The Gift Project on TheWadi’s company index.

Tags: facebook featured The Gifts Project