The very idea that a company can generate income by selling something that's little more than a few hundred coloured pixels is pretty mind-boggling.
But with Facebook announcing this week that it is changing the pricing model in its gift shop, from a flat $1 per gift to variable pricing based around credits, revenue from virtual gifts is clearly sufficient enough to make having a very real retail strategy worthwhile.
Varying web reports estimate current revenue at around £35m from Facebook gifts, with a hoped for doubling of that income by introducing the changes. Some have even suggested a nine-figure income in 2009 could be possible.
That's a lot, by any standards, but for selling pints you can't drink, flowers you can't smell and donkeys you can't, well, do whatever it is you can do with real donkeys, it's staggering.
Is it any different to sending someone a real gift? Given there are somewhere in the region of 35 million of them adorning Facebook homepages, plenty of people clearly don't think so. But try telling the wife that her anniversary gift is virtual and I suspect your subsequent status update would not make for pleasant reading.
