Facebook will give gifts

May 18 news about the long-awaited Facebook IPO almost completely ousted from the media space another, also very interesting event. Internet giant bought a small startup Karma. For a company with only 16 employees, and which began selling its smartphone application in February of this year, Facebook, according to sources , laid out 80 million. If the figure is correct, then this is the company's second-largest acquisition after a shocking purchase of Instagram for 1 billion. Since the beginning of the year, this is the fifth company operating in the mobile market, which Facebook has acquired. In addition to Instagram, this list includes Glancee , lightbox and Tagtile . Why did Karma attract Facebook?

Karma is an application for iPhone and Android that allows you to send gifts to your friends without even knowing their physical address. Once you have chosen and paid for the gift, you notify the recipient via SMS, by mail or through Facebook. He can specify the address where it is most convenient for him to receive a gift, choose a more suitable gift option, or refuse it altogether by sending money to charity. In addition, the application reminds of upcoming birthdays and gives recommendations taking into account the preferences and plans of the recipient. In fact, this is an online gift shop, actively using information from social networks to raise the quality of service to a new level.

Gift shops are a profitable business, this market is valued at tens of billions of dollars, and most of the sales are done in regular stores, and not via the Internet.
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Karma will get a significant advantage from closer integration with a social network with almost a billion users. And for Facebook, this is a new way to monetize. The corporation has long been blamed for the fact that the bulk of its revenue comes from advertising, and its profits from each of the 900 million customers are very small . This acquisition suggests that Facebook is diversifying its sources of profit, seriously deciding to engage in e-commerce.