Wait, you're part of the online world and you're not obsessed with the virtual? Hmmm... We might need an intervention here!

Actually, I admit it, I too am a huge fan of Amazon.com and have not only shared Amazon gift cards with friends and family -- and once as an apology for messing something up, but that's another story -- but I also have quite a few friends' addresses on file at Amazon if I see something that's perfect for them.

Shhh... don't tell them, okay?

As you probably know, you can already send Amazon.com gift cards via email, so it seems like it'd be an easy extension to send them via a Facebook message, but it turns out that they've done a far nicer job than that and integrated Amazon gift cards into the entire Facebook experience.

To demonstrate, I'm going to send a thank you gift card to my friend Klaus.

I'll start by going to Amazon's gift card gifting area. On that page is:

Click on "Buy Now" and Amazon will ask permission to connect to your Facebook account:

Immediately below this link is a nice explanation of what's going to happen and in what order, but let's just jump in rather than figure out what's happening! Click on "Connect with Facebook"...

This is a bit odd: I'm not clear why Amazon wants access to my list of friends' birthdays, but maybe I'll get useful offers and reminders. Actually, this highlights a flaw in how Facebook apps are written: I'd like to opt out of sharing birthdays, but proceed otherwise. There is, of course, no way to do that.

Way on the bottom right corner of the window are two buttons, "Allow" and "Don't Allow". Click on the former and you'll immediately be shown the Facebook gift card entry area on Amazon:

Go through the images, pick a graphic that you think is attractive, and click on "Select". Now, below that you'll see the rest of the info input fields:

If you look closely, you'll see that there's a default message to Matt from Chris. This initially confused me, but then I realized it's just to prompt you to enter something thoughtful. Besides, I'm not Chris!

As you start to enter your Facebook friends' name, you'll see that it's expanded as it would be on Facebook itself:

Make sure that the match happens to ensure that the new gift card goes to the right place. Click on their name once it appears, if you want.

Here's what I entered:

Notice that there's an option to not have the gift card be public. Smart. Even better, you can schedule when the card should be delivered, so if you know you're on that great backpack trip through Patagonia during your sister's birthday, instead of remembering while on the road, you can queue up their birthday gift card weeks - or months! - in advance.

I click on the purchase button and the entire order is neatly summarized in my shopping cart:

Looks good. To proceed, I click on "Proceed to Checkout".

At this point you'll go through all the usual Amazon account login and transaction steps...

Finally, you'll find that it takes a few minutes for the system to inject the gift card into the Facebook stream, but after a short bit, you'll see something like this:

Nice, neat, and a simple way to show someone you're thinking about them. Especially a fiancée!