Facebook has announced that the virtual giftshop that allowed users to gift virtual goodies to friends shall be closed shortly. In a message posted on the Facebook blog, Jared Morgenstern – a Facebook employee writes,
“Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts, but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts. We’ll be able to focus more on improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, games, comments, the “Like” button and the Wall.”
It is not clear why the company would choose to do away with one of their very few revenue generating products.
While it is pretty much true that such features clutter the Facebook real estate, it is also a fact that the company makes money off selling virtual goods. Meanwhile I wonder if the company could be outsourcing this virtual goods functionality. I tried to look for any recent acquisitions/partnerships that could point in this direction.
Are you aware of any?