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Facebook, the students-only turned come-one-come-all social networking community, has introduced a new gift shop feature. For $1, you can buy a cutesy icon and send it on to someone else on the Facebook network. The recipient can start accumulating these “tiny tokens of appreciation” on their profile page. You can make the gift public, which makes it show up on the “Wall” or keep it private thus hiding it from the world.

There is a non profit twist to this feature. All proceeds from gift shop sales in the month of February go to Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. The company has this to say about its selection:

When choosing a charity to work with, Facebook turned to its users. We discovered that not only was breast cancer awareness the largest cause-related group on Facebook, it was the second largest Facebook group, with more than 800,000 members.

Many non profit groups have started creating profiles on these social networking sites with the intent of reaching the users within them. Here is an example of how that development can bear fruit, both in terms of membership and financial rewards. The company is promising at least $0.50 for every dollar raised.

The gift shop adds an interesting new tweak to the social networking websites where interactions were so far curtailed to making friends, posting stuff, reading your friends’ stuff, and leaving comments for each other. All free, available for the time and effort of registering with these networks. As far as I know, this may be the first attempt at monetizing these interactions. Making it a $1 effort that people are more likely to spend without much thought seems to be a good way to go.

Social networks and micro payments can make for a beneficial combination for the future. If this one picks up steam, it can be creatively modified to become a fundraising avenue for non profit organizations. Give a polar bear icon for $1 and the funds will be donated to World Wildlife Federation. Or even better, give a $1 directly to the Save Darfur campaign and the campaign will give you a ribbon that you can display on your profile.

So many possibilities!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Marketing, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.