If you are like me and have your friends and family on Facebook, the Facebook Gift isn’t working for you. If you celebrate birthdays, or anniversary, or any occasions with your friends and family, the last minute gifting isn’t the experience you are used to. That’s stressful for the givers, and that is not how people exchange gifts anyway. At least, not on the web.
I am not completely denying the need for last minute online gifting. If you want to say, “…thank you, please let me buy you a coffee…” then Facebook, Wrapp, Treater (and numerous others) has made it very simple application for some folks. But most of us would like to say thank you by joining their friends in-person over coffee. For them sending last minute gift or coupons isn’t the natural option.
Last minute gifting feeds into the guilt-consciousness and drives throwing money on something which is unthoughtful and mostly useless. A much deeper psychological need from gift exchange remains unmet.
And for that reason, I want to convey to all the gift giving individuals that if you are reminded at the last moment about someone’s birthday, whom you care most but did not do much till Facebook reminded you, then it’s late anyway. Your gifting gesture will only reveal your guilt and not the thoughtfulness. You can buy a flower, or nice chocolate, but that won’t make much of an impression.
I never consider the last minute reminders to send flowers and chocolates to my dear ones. I think about them all the time – when a good idea comes to me, I take a mental note so that I can recall it and purchase the item at the right time.
And, I am one among millions of people out there who think this way too.
The problem is — I almost always feel that when I am reminded about my friend’s occasion, I have hard time recalling what I had thought about? Suddenly, I am idea-less
