Looking a Facebook Gift horse in the mouth

Facebook has a new IRL physical gift purchasing option, “Facebook Gifts,” which the company opened on Sept. 27 (although the surprise had been spoiled early by The Next Web).

The short of it is that Facebook users (American ones only for now) can now click on a tiny giftwrapped present icon in their Friends’ birthday alerts or on above a Friend’s wall posts and pick from a list of stuff, mostly Valentine-y type stuff including cupcakes, chocolates, flowers, teddy bears and stuffed Angry Birds toys and also clothing and pay for it directly on the site with their credit cards. The Friend-cum-recipient of the gift then gets an alert saying they’ve been Gifted and have to enter in their shipping address and then someone mails them the gift.

Aside from the fact that this puts Facebook squarely into e-commerce and nearer to all-out competition with Amazon and eBay, and aside from the fact that Facebook now has a potentially lucrative new revenue stream (though it’s worth pointing out that Facebook Gifts could become a new form of spam ala Event invites and Game invites that us casual and lite Facebookers ignore or delete without regard), there are two other advantages Facebook seeks to gain from this effort:

1. Credit Card Numbers

Apple has been widely lauded by tech and business writers for the ingenious way it captured 100s of millions of credit card numbers through iTunes accounts.

If Facebook even gets a small percentage of users to give it their credit card numbers, the result is yet another piece of data the company has about millions – not just any piece of banal or easily faked data either, but arguably one of the most important numbers that will ever be used to identify and interact with people, a bit of crucial commercial data.

Even better than that, the credit card data can be combined with all of the other data users have already entered into Facebook, resulting in, theoretically improved ad targeting. Perhaps even more importantly, if Facebook ever follows in Amazon’s footsteps and enables 1-click purchasing of items other than gifts, that too could unlock a powerful new revenue stream and further increase engagement (read: time spent on Facebook) among users.

2. Shipping Addresses

Facebook is asking users to gift recipients to provide their shipping addresses. This is a powerful method of verifying the authenticity of user’s other profile information (does your current town match your shipping address?) and yet another point of real world data that Facebook can add to the rest of the profile to create a more accurate picture of its users.

I think the idea of a Facebook ID card is still pretty far fetched, but at the same time, it’s hard not to think of something like that being at least being technically possible if and once millions of users begin adding their shipping addresses to the website.

Most importantly for both users and the website, there’s no indication that Facebook would ever make such information public without a user’s consent. (duh!)

Perhaps most interestingly, though, is the fact that Facebook could also combine that data with its own Facebook Maps data (Facebook Maps rely on mapping data sourced from Microsoft Bing and Nokia), which shows where users have traveled and lived, if they decide to enter that information or not delete it from their profiles.

Imagine if Facebook’s nearly 1 billion users (over 1 billion counting Instagram but that’s not really fair since they’re still distinct networks, for now) all used maps and all entered in their shipping addresses. Even if just a fraction do, Facebook still instantly becomes one of the premiere sources of personal geolocation data in the world, far and away exceeding Foursquare, Instagram and the like.

Facebook could use shipping addresses to offer even more targeted, localized advertising and deals, including mobile, (“Offers”) to consumers, again treading on Amazon’s turf as well as Groupon’s.

So yeah, once again, maps are important. Good maps, that is. Especially when combined with e-commerce data and local deals. Google knows this. Facebook must know this. That’s what Facebook Gifts is really about. Good luck, Apple.