I was always perplexed by Facebook's decision to get rid of the birthday gifting system (on someone's birthday, you could pay FB $1 to give them some sort of picture as a gift). It wasn't popular among my friends at first, but it eventually got to the point where every time it was someone's birthday, they got at least one gift from someone.
I can only imagine that if Facebook had pushed it hard enough, it would only have become even more commonplace. When you have 500M+ users, each of whom has a birthday once a year, and each of whom has numerous friends to wish him a happy birthday, $1 gifts are nothing to balk about.
The opportunity they had reminded me of the story behind how the diamond business itself created the profitable tradition of giving engagement rings and wedding rings.
Your post immediately made me imagine a go-between that enabled people to send a physical/voucher gift to an email address or social media account. Sender would choose something and pay for it, but assign the recipient as a virtual address. The recipient would then hit the go-between and arrange fulfillment, choosing the postal address themselves.
If you could get it tied into the networks and built up as something of a tradition within Facebook/Twitter /Pinterest (as you said, Facebook would be perfect for it), it could get some traction.
Maybe have it trawl recent posts for gift suggestions in various price brackets.
I can only imagine that if Facebook had pushed it hard enough, it would only have become even more commonplace. When you have 500M+ users, each of whom has a birthday once a year, and each of whom has numerous friends to wish him a happy birthday, $1 gifts are nothing to balk about.
The opportunity they had reminded me of the story behind how the diamond business itself created the profitable tradition of giving engagement rings and wedding rings.