Gift groupies
eBay has launched a tool that uses Facebook to let friends and family share the cost of purchasing fixed price products on the auction site, intended for a specific recipient.
The eBay Group Gifts application is a fixture on the US website and Facebook and eBay recons it offers "a unique value proposition: ‘give bigger, give better, give it together".
The firm says it was designed to improve on ‘inefficient group giving solutions' using Facebook and PayPal in time for Christmas so groups of people can chip in for larger presents. The application addresses "every stage of the process, from gift selection and collecting money to inviting friends and physically delivering the gift on behalf of the group," said Amit Menipaz, who led the project at eBay.
Contributions can be made through PayPal and other choices, while a thermometer displays how far towards the purchase price goal a group is at any given time.
"In addition to cost savings and efficiencies that it can create for groups, eBay Group Gifts is a lot of fun, especially for the many eBay users who are involved with social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter," said Julie Haddon, eBay's director of social media and integrated marketing.
Any user connected to friends and family members on Facebook can automatically use these connections within eBay Group Gifts, inviting them to contribute to the purchase of any fixed item on the site, in a new way to pester parents with a present list, perhaps. When users search for a gift, eBay Groups will access information from a recipient's Facebook page to help suggest ideas too, said eBay.
Andy Palmer, manager of buyer experience at eBay, said the firm conducted focus group research.
"It produced many unanimous ‘aha' reactions from users, with younger users who are steeped in using social applications coming up with use cases for it that we hadn't anticipated and older users finding it to make the process of giving a gift in tandem very easy," he said.
In a bid to stay ahead of the game, eBay has recently launched apps for Android phones and iPads in the UK so people can continue bidding for bizarre but cheap and cheerful bits and pieces on the go.
