You can send virtual gifts from 1-800-Flowers to your Facebook friends. It's called virtual gifting, and as this article points out, virtual goods allow people to interact with your brand at little or no expense.
I'm sort of surprised that giving a virtual bottle of wine hasn't surfaced on some winery's Facebook fan page yet. As you can see from the 1-800-Flowers fan page above, it's not tremendously complicated. And it would be cool to send a very expensive bottle of wine as a virtual gift, since 12 grand is a little out of my price range. (K&L, are you listening?)
Virtual wine gifts don't require Facebook. Something quite similar (and possibly even better) can be done on your winery's Web site today with e-mail and a little clever design. It's really only a more imaginative way of doing "tell a friend." It's just that social media (like Facebook) makes us more prone to thinking about giving gifts to our friends.
What do you think?
Actually I have a lot of thoughts, and at least one question... which is: Why would 1800flowers create a separate shopping path on Facebook when they already have a world-class ecommerce website I could be re-directed to?
Note that this separate path requires me to install an app, with the usual scary message: "Allowing GiftFeed access will let it pull your profile information, photos, your friends' info, and other content that it requires to work." I have not done this... I tend to be app-averse on FB.
The above occurs when I go to their "Shop" tab. The "Welcome" tab does give me the opportunity to send a virtual gift without installing the GiftFeed app, but fans who go to the Shop tab don't see this.
The virtual gift app pops up a window and allows me to post a virtual gift on someone's wall. (Curiously the "Publish" pop-up kept re-appearing; this is why you got two cupcakes!)
I've done a quick search around FB for a simple virtual gift app and had no luck. Do you know of one?
Posted by: El Jefe | March 30, 2010 at 12:35 PM
Perhaps if the virtual wine received could be then redeemed for a slight discount off a real bottle purchased at the winery or online. Not sure if there's a mechanism for that on Facebook.
I don't like Facebook apps either, but I can be bribed with wine discounts.
Posted by: Larry Chandler | March 31, 2010 at 08:42 AM
My response to both posts is that Facebook is just one way of approaching the problem (and most technically sophisticated people have a problem with the carte-blanche approach to app security on Facebook - you have no idea what an app will do).
As with "real" e-commerce, I think wineries are best served by having fine control over their "virtual gift" experience.
But many wineries are turning to Facebook Fan Pages as an easier alternative to trying to create/update their own Web sites, so I wanted to give an example of a major corporation.
As far as e-commerce on Facebook goes, I think it's still an experiment in whether a "passive" shopping experience brings in sales vs. linking out to a full-blown e-commerce site.
Posted by: Mike Duffy | March 31, 2010 at 09:34 AM
I think virtual wine giving though a site like Facebook is a great idea. People are there and thinking about others while on the site, you have birthday notifications that come up on your home page and a Facebook app that the person can just click, select a bottle of wine, and send it off to their friend is a great idea. (of course the giftee would receive the bottle of wine late). The trends on this kind of shopping would be very interesting indeed to notice.
Wineries are struggling right now and this would be a good way to bring more exposure to their wines for sure!
Posted by: Bee | April 03, 2010 at 10:49 AM