eBay has just taken another leap into online commerce, with the launch of their new service called eBay Group Gifts.  The move was  no doubt eBay’s way of letting us all know that they plan to ‘stay current’ and further expand out past their auction and classifieds brands, which they are so widely known for.

The eBay Group Gift service has taken the world of online social interaction and fused it in with the act of gift buying, primarily through the services relationship with Facebook.  The way it works is that once accessing the Group Gift site, you can enter the gift recipients name or connect to Facebook to find a recipient on your friends list.  Connecting to Facebook will allow you to take advantage of the services targeted suggestions, based on your Facebook friends (the intended gift recipient) likes.  Once you’ve selected the friend and an item to give them (only eBay’s ‘buy it now’ items apply), you let Group Gift know how much of the purchase price you are willing to kick in and of course input your Pay Pal information.  (You need a Pay Pal account to start a Group Gift, but those contributing to the gift do not).  Once that’s done, you can ask others to help raise the money to purchase the gift.  You can email contributors, post the item to your Facebook News Feed, or publish the URL on sites such as Twitter; all great methods to let related friends and family know that their monetary donations, to said gift, is welcomed.   Those willing to contribute will add funds into your Pay Pal account and once all the funds are collected, eBay’s Group Gift service will send you an eCard, with well wishes from all of the contributors, which you then of course will send to the intended recipient.

Given what the holidays or work retirement parties can be like, this will probably prove to be a great idea, if it is widely publicised and let’s face it,  there is no better time to launch a service like this than now, given that the holidays are right around the corner.

Each post holiday season we sit back and marvel at the numbers sites such as Amazon were able to bring in.  I wonder where eBay’s Group Gift service will fall in the mix?  I guess it depends on how much or even what eBay is willing to do to drive awareness.  One thing is clear though, I believe more grass roots, not nameplate merchants, will start to use social commerce or at lease be introduced to the idea through eBay’s Group Gift service, and that may not be a bad thing for customers looking to take advantage of current technologies and embedded rules of commerce, which usually equate to convenience.

Check out this info video on eBay’s Group Gift service.