Facebook appears to have taken the first step on a long road towards establishing a global internet currency.
Facebook Credits:
A virtual currency you can use to buy virtual goods in many games and applications on the Facebook platform”
can now be purchased in-store across the UK and the US.
The Telegraph reported that as of this week in the UK, gift cards for Facebook Credits will be available for purchase in Tesco and Game stores.
This is following last weeks news that Facebook Credits gift cards were expanding their retail outlets in the US, now being sold in: Safeway, GameStop, and RadioShack. This is building on their initial store outlets of Target, Best Buy and Walmart in both the U.S. and Canada.
Currently the Credits are only transferable in the purchase of virtual goods that are brought in Facebook apps. Traditionally these Credits were earned through a loyalty scheme.
To date the credits are transferable on 50 per cent of the 200 apps using credits on Facebook. With Mafia Wars and Farmville being the most popular games to adopt the gift cards.
These gift cards offer an exceptional source of revenue for both Facebook and the app developers. Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, the company responsible for making many of the most famous apps and games, spoke at yesterday’s Web 2.0 Summit. He claimed Zynga currently have an staggering 320 million users. AllFacebook suggested that from this mass user base, Facebook takes a 30% cut of all transactions involving Facebook credits.
Facebook are hoping to make these cards a number one stocking filler for Christmas, selling their cards as a potential alternative to the traditional gift card or voucher with the advantage of the receiver of the gift not needing to redeem the gift at a shop.
However, perhaps more interesting are the potential intentions Facebook has for the Facebook Credits gift cards.
Deborah Liu, manager of product marketing for Facebook Credits and games at Facebook, told the Telegraph that despite the Credits currently being restricted to Facebook. com, there is the possibility that in the future the cards would be usable on other sights as log as the user has a Facebook login.
Liu stated: “Someday it’s something that we would consider,” she said. “But there’s a lot that we want to do on Facebook.com for now.”
This suggests that through the use of Facebook Connect, one day users will be able to use the Credits across the entire web, for a variety of goods.
AllFacebook explains this would lend ‘the brand recognition of Facebook to the retailer as well as providing a more fully integrated e-commerce solution than PayPal. While it may be a way off, Facebook Credits could potentially be a large step towards a universal online currency.’
