The Facebook Blog

The Facebook Gift Shop is closing on Aug. 1 as we focus instead on improving other products. As of that date, you will no longer be able to give new gifts from the Gift Shop.

The gifts you've already received on your Wall will remain visible, and you still will be able to view your sent and received gifts on your gifts page. People also can continue to use the many third-party applications on Facebook for giving and receiving gifts, such as Birthday Cards, Hallmark Social Calendar, Pieces of Flair and someecards.

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.

Original gifts between Jared and Will.

We're continuing to enhance the Facebook Gift Shop so you have more ways to express your appreciation for the people in your life. A couple months ago, we took a first step by testing new types of gifts created by developers, including e-cards, charity donations and even real-world gifts where you can buy a friend a physical gift along with a virtual one.

We now are unveiling a newly stocked and redesigned Gift Shop, with new categories of gifts and additional gifts for charity, music and sports from developers. With so many gifts available, we... also introduced a new design to make it easier for you to browse and purchase gifts with different gift categories. We will be rolling these changes out to everyone in the coming weeks, so don't worry if you don't see them just yet.

Remember, in order to buy Facebook Gifts, you must purchase credits on the site using a major credit card. Credits cost 10 cents in U.S. currency, and they are available for purchase in 15 currencies. After you select your gift, click "Buy," and we'll walk you through the rest.

Music Gifts (U.S. only)
You now will be able to purchase songs as gifts for your friends. The "Music and MP3s" section of the Gift Shop, powered by LaLa.com, offers over 8 million songs for any music lover from artists such as Beyonce, the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Imogen Heap and even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Web songs are 1 credit each, while full, downloadable, and digital rights management-free (DRM) MP3s are 9 credits each.

Gift recipients can play their Web songs and MP3s from their Facebook News Feed and wall as frequently as they like, as well as from LaLa.com if they have an existing account or choose to sign up using Facebook Connect. MP3 recipients also have the added ability to download their songs and enjoy their gift on music players like iTunes and Windows Media Player. Other people who are able to see the music gift will only be able to play the song in full once, after which they will be able to play a 30-second clip.

Sports Gifts
For the next big game, be sure to rally your friends by sending them their favorite team's mascot or jersey with branded virtual gifts. Officially licensed gifts from the U.S. National Basketball Association and U.S. Major League Soccer are now available in the Gift Shop, as well as school-themed gifts from a number of major U.S. colleges ranging from Oklahoma State to Stanford University. These gifts are offered in the "Sports" section of the Gift Shop.

Gifts for Good
You already can purchase gifts on behalf of non-profits, including Kiva, Project Red, TOMS Shoes, Charity Water and the World Wildlife Fund. The net proceeds of those gifts are donated to the organizations. Now, you'll be able to support even more causes your friends care about through gifts offered by the Causes application in the Facebook Gift Shop.

My sister is an animal-lover and for her upcoming birthday I'll be making a contribution to the Humane Society of the U.S. through a Facebook Gift that will go towards towards animal rescue efforts by that organization. In addition to the proceeds that directly impact the cause, my gift will appear as an image on her Wall.

Whether your gift contribution is for disaster relief, world hunger, medical research or education, your gift will have a financial impact and help spread the cause's word.

With a greater variety of gifts, we hope that you will have even more freedom to express how you feel for every occasion. Look for even more gifting options to come over the next few months.


Will, an engineer, is excited to be making the new Gift Shop available to his friends in time for his birthday.

We moved to credit-based pricing for the Facebook Gift Shop last October. Now we want to simplify the use of those credits by taking away a zero from gift prices. Beginning tonight, the majority of gifts will require 10 credits to give rather than 100.

To match this change, we are updating any outstanding credits you have by the same proportion. This only affects the way credits are calculated; you will still be able to buy the same amount of gifts as before.

When you visit the Gift Shop, you can view the number of credits in your account in the... upper-right corner. If the adjustment has been made, you'll see a note explaining the change as well as the updated prices for gifts.



You can continue to purchase credits, now priced at 10 credits for $1. We expect to offer more ways to use credits and gifts in the future, and already we have run tests where users can share credits between friends.

We want to make sure that even the smallest amount of credits is meaningful. Now by accumulating as little as 10 credits, you can buy a gift to add more significance to a friend's birthday, celebrate a special occasion or simply have fun.


Jared Morgenstern is a product manager for the Gift Shop.

We will welcome our 200 millionth active user to Facebook some time today, and I want to take this opportunity to describe what this means to us and what we hope it can mean for everyone using Facebook.

When we built Facebook in 2004, our goal was to create a richer, faster way for people to share information about what was happening around them. We thought that giving people better tools to communicate would help them better understand the world, which would then give them even greater power to change the world.

Creating channels between people... who want to work together towards change has always been one of the ways that social movements push the world forward and make it better. Both U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Nicholas Sarkozy have used Facebook as a way to organize their supporters. From the protests against the Colombian FARC, a 40-year old terrorist organization, to fighting oppressive, fringe groups in India, people use Facebook as a platform to build connections and organize action.

More broadly, technology has made it easier and faster for people across the world to share more and more -- from the daily activities of their lives to events that impact their communities. At Facebook, we want to build the best service in the world for people to connect with and share everything that is important to them, whether day-to-day or world-changing. A heat map of our growth since 2004 shows how quickly people across the world are connecting on Facebook.



Growing rapidly to 200 million users is a really good start, but we've always known that in order for Facebook to help people represent everything that is happening in their world, everyone needs to have a voice. This is why we are working hard to build a service that everyone, everywhere can use, whether they are a person, a company, a president or an organization working for change.

To celebrate and support all of these voices and their potential to improve the world, we are creating a space on Facebook where people can share their stories about how Facebook has helped them give back to their communities, effect change or connect with a distant relative. We've also worked with 16 charitable and advocacy organizations to create gifts that are now available in our gift shop. The organization the gift represents will receive between 90 percent to 95 percent of the cost of the gift, after administrative expenses for the transaction, so we encourage you to share your passion for a cause with your friends and in doing so, support the cause. Facebook will not keep any part of your contribution.

There are still many more people and groups in the world whose voices we want to connect with everyone who wants to hear them. So even as we celebrate the 200 millionth person and all of you using Facebook today, we are working to bring the power of sharing to everyone in the world.