Will begin testing next week

Aug 29, 2009 08:44 GMT  ·  By

Facebook is slowly expanding its Gift Shop to allow third parties to offer their own virtual gifts and even real products. Last week, it announced four companies would start selling their own wares in the shop, and now, the social network is revealing that an additional four charities will also be joining the initial test starting sometime next week.

Facebook has big plans for its Gift Shop, which now sells virtual gifts using the social network's own virtual currency, Facebook Credits. Most gifts sell for ten Credits ($1) and they have all come from Facebook until now. But, as the platform matures and gains traction, the company plans to allow third-party developers to use the virtual currency in their apps and also other companies to start selling their own products in the gift shop. Facebook revealed last week that it would start things off with only four companies, American Greetings Interactive, GreetBeatz, Someecards, and Real Gifts, which would begin to sell in the Gift Shop sometime the following week.

The announcement came from Facebook's Marketing and Outreach Director, Randi Zuckerberg, speaking at the Social Good Conference in New York, held by social media blog Mashable. In this first step, four charities and nonprofit organizations, Project Red, Kiva, the World Wildlife Fund and Tom’s Shoes, which is actually a for-profit company that donates a pair of shoes for every one sold, will be added to the Gift Shop.

Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-founder and CEO sister, went on to say that most charities didn’t really make the best of the tools available on Facebook and listed some of the most common mistakes the organizations made. One of the most encountered wrong moves was creating and relying on a Facebook group instead of a Page for the charity that would make it a lot more easier to manage and provide some better options as well.