• by Seana Mulcahy , June 16, 2008

Okay, get your mind out of the gutter. I'm talkin' virtual gifts here. My guess is that this audience might post negatively about them. However, I have seen many of you on Facebook, and seen that you have received virtual gifts. Maybe for your birthday or a promotion or the birth of a new child. You may be one of those who send or reciprocate anonymously. Me? I give and receive with full screen name.

Last year I read a bunch of stats saying the virtual gifts industry was worth $15 million USD already. I wholeheartedly believed it. I had clients, prospects and colleagues that either thought it was a joke or didn't bat an eyelash. There was no happy medium in their opinion.

At the time, I represented a client that was a publisher of sorts in a virtual world. Sounds a bit funny to say, but they were and are very much in the avatar (even though I hate that word) space. Once their avatars grew by usage, time spent and virality, they built a virtual world to give them more to do. Voila--it was beginning to work. It seems like it still is, but I am not working with them any more. (Yep, in my business we work our way out of jobs all the time--build success and your work is done.)

I digress. I was amazed at what I saw when I peeked under the hood of this site. Users seemed to have an addictive behavior. They went onto the site daily or multiple times daily, changed up wardrobes on their avatars, sent messages to friends, kept changing their status messages, etc.

This, to me, was the beginning of what would be the behavior of the social media enthusiast. What would we call them? Socialite? Nah. Mega social? That's stupid too. Socialphile? Maybe, but that sounds creepy... I don't know.

Sure, there's a sea of social networks that have come out since last year. Too many, I think. Go to any trade show and everyone is saying they have a social media network. To me they are audiences. Loyal audiences with commonalities. Take Facebook, for instance. I still think it was one of the most fabulous ideas of the century. A walled garden that was (more so) protected for students. I couldn't believe how it took off.

I was excited when Facebook opened its doors up to folks like us. (Okay, I'm a dork.) While I'm not one for overfriending, I sure have a hell of a lot of colleagues as "friends" on there. When I take a look at their "walls" I see gifts...and lots of them. How many are free? How many are paid? Why wouldn't a rep pay a measly dollar to send a virtual bouquet of flowers to a client at an agency for her bday? It's peanuts in the boondoggle world we all live in.

I was happy to find a recent online BrandWeek article, outlining the efforts of Brand Networks close tracking of this virtual gifting for six months.

"CEO Jamie Tedford estimated there will be 200 million virtual gifts given via Facebook in the next year: "That, to us, felt like a real business opportunity." As part of the partnership, Brand Networks retains a 3-7% share of affiliates' sales.

Check out this link to find a detailed analysis of virtual gifts sent:

http://lsvp.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/facebook-gifts-analysis.pdf.