Facebook has announced the launch of its new Gifts service, the social network's big initiative to branch out into the lucrative market for e-commerce and gift-giving, Digital Spy reported.

Unveiled late yesterday (September 27), Gifts allows users to select and send real products to their Facebook friends as gifts. A notification is sent to the person that they have received a gift, and they can then state where they want the product to be sent.

Gifts can be indexed to significant event reminders, such as anniversaries or birthdays, or just sent as a one-off present - and crucially everything happens within the Facebook platform, both on desktop and mobile.

The move opens up a potentially huge new revenue source for Facebook, as its global audience of more than 950 million members represents a massive commercial market for selling products.

Facebook has always resisted overly intrusive commercial initiatives, but it clearly sees the social value of gift-giving as an e-commerce initiative.

AllThingsD notes that this move has been on the cards since Facebook acquired Karma, the social gift-giving application, on the same day that it listed on U.S. stock market Nasdaq in May. Karma's technology apparently underpins the Facebook Gifts service.