Facebook Ditches 'Gifts'

Clip art lovers despaired yesterday, as Facebook announced it's closing its Gift Shop to focus on other, more popular services. As of Aug. 1, you won’t be able to send new gifts, though your old ones will still show up on your profile. “Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts,” the feature’s co-creator wrote on the company blog, but Facebook says was necessary to refocus the company.

Don’t rush to spend any gift credits you may for some bizarre reason have purchased. Those will turn into “Facebook Credits,” the upcoming virtual currency for the entire social networking site. The move is something of a surprise, says CNET, because it comes less than a year after a big overhaul of the feature. Analysts also assumed that selling 3KB pieces of clip art for a dollar was a pretty profitable endeavor. (More Facebook stories.)