Buy Your Facebook Friends a Latte, Teddy Bear or Socks

Facebook has launched Facebook Gifts, allowing users to send real-life, not virtual, gifts to friends on the social network.

Remember those lame virtual gifts people used to annoy you with on Facebook? Well, now you can  make up for those by replacing them with real-life cup of coffee, cupcakes and socks.

Facebook Gifts launched this week and U.S. users will be the first to use it, according to Facebook.

From Facebook:

Choose a gift, attach a card and send. You can post your gift to your friend's timeline or send it privately. Your friend can then unwrap a preview of the gift and it will show up on their doorstep a few days later. 
Apparently users can pay right away or add payment details later, but the giftee has to provide an address (it was only a matter of time before Facebook got that, right?) The odd part is that the gift just isn't sent, it's actually previewed by the giftee who chooses the color, size or flavor he or she wants -- so much for surprises.
 
Right now Facebook said there are "hundreds of gifts" but we mainly spied cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery in New York City, stuffed bears from Gund, ice cream, socks and Starbucks gift cards.
 
It's probably smart for Facebook to introduce this before the busy holiday season and bless us all with low-effort gift-giving. Even smarter is getting users to spend money on both a desktop and mobile phone.
 
The feature will work the same on mobile as it does on the desktop, making it one of the few Facebook features that does (and helps out their mobile revenue.) 
 
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