Real Chocolate Gifts Through Facebook. Sweet!
By Kristen Nicole 2008-02-21 17:39:46 UTC
Mars UK is taking the concept of gifting to a whole new level. The maker of candy bars is in the development phase for creating a Facebook application that will allow members to actually buy chocolate for each other, according to a report on Food Production Daily. Wanna send someone a Twix bar? Log in to Facebook.
The app will be called Celebration, and it's a very nifty idea for marketing directly to consumers through an application that looks to leverage relationships between friends. And it's not like you "gift" someone a chocolate bar and then they get it in the mail. That would sometimes require private information to be obtained or given, which some would be uncomfortable with.
And even if you did know the address of the person you wanted to send a bar to, there are a bunch of friends out there whose address you may not have, but you'd love to send them a chocolate bar anyway. So what Mars does is send along points, which the recipient can redeem at a participating PayPoint store.
This is currently in the UK only, but I can't wait for it to make its way to the states. Who doesn't like getting chocolate? There have been a few initiatives similar to this, such as Going.com's "Buy a Drink" option. And I think Mars could even take the Celebration app to another level if the company could manage to link up with Facebook birthday alerts. Knowing Facebook, it would be an ideal situation for the social network, and less intrusive than Beacon.
Topics: Facebook, Social Media