Ballywho News

Recently, Nick O’Neill of All Facebook, the Unofficial Facebook Resource shared his take on the very sad news that there’s an impending death in the social media world, one that many of us in the office are mourning before it’s even happened.

Facebook birthday gifts. As of August 1, the plan is for Facebook to completely kill their virtual gift shop.

Whatever will we do without the teddy bears, boxes of candy and virtual lipstick kiss that up until now we’ve been able to send a favorite co-worker or loved one from our Facebook accounts.

Okay, we’ll admit that we’re being a little facetious here (especially with that lipstick smudge reference) but believe it or not, virtual goods have been an unbelievably successful marketplace at Facebook, one singing to the tune of $100 million…and that’s not virtual, that’s bonafide dinero!

But as one gift shop closes, another cycle has been moving full speed ahead over at Facebook. In May, Facebook began rolling out its new Credits service. So how does this work? Facebook users can purchase a set number of credits, most likely through a painless means such as PayPal, and these pre-paid credits will allow them to purchase mobile apps, games and other goods to integrate with Facebook. Apple has experienced firsthand the success of rolling out a plethora of apps and plenty of these developers are hopping on board the new Facebook supertrain to supply the goods to get a cut of the sales, much like the sales model Apple uses with its app providers.

As we see a shift in Facebook away from birthday clown thumbnails and virtual rose bouquets to more online games and mobile apps, it will be fascinating to see how this new strategy will impact the face of social media. Will your business need to figure out how virtual goods and apps might help get your brand greater attention from social media users? To keep visitors coming to your page, will you have to provide incentives in credits or access to in-demand apps to keep them coming back? We’ll be keeping any eye on this trend and what impact it will have on businesses using their Facebook page to reach out to customers, introduce their brand to others and carve out a niche in the marketplace.

And with that, we’ve got some Fish Friends to dive into…