Facebook Makes Ridiculous Money On Ridiculous Gifts

Although Facebook hasn't publicly revealed the exact breakdown of it's revenue stream, a few enterprising individuals have been hard at work trying to figure it out. The most shocking figure to come out of it all? Facebook is making an estimated $34.5 million off of their virtual gifts program! That's right, they are making $34.5 million from people buying "bear hugs" and "roses" to send to their friends on Facebook, who then probably just ignore the damned things anyway.

Talk about monetizing nothing, people! There are people out there paying a dollar or more for nothing more than a poorly designed graphic to send to their friends. There are few things that shock me these days, but this is one of them. I've seen these gifts, and I assumed there were idiotic throwaways. Nothing real, intelligent, thinking people would ever spend money on. But here we are, plenty of money being spent on these entirely useless "gifts."

Well, if you're one of the people that has purchased a "gift" for someone on Facebook, I believe I have an iPhone app to sell you...

Facebook selling digital gifts at a $35m run rate [Lightspeed]
[via: CNET]