As Facebook and Twitter shore up the Internet as a social media outlet, what can be more social than giving gifts to all your newly found e-friends. Gifting, not to be confused with gift giving per se, has emerge as the latest e-trend. Of course, all this social bookmarking and chatting leaves little time between working, family, and real life. Enter the phenomenon of gifting.

It is a relatively straightforward endeavor: you give a gift to a selected friend, lover or relation. The difference is you can give bigger and better gifts than you alone can afford. Gifting, handled by professional sites, sends an email to everyone who may care enough to contribute to said friend, lover or relation. You designate a gift, in most cases something as extravagant as a new laptop or Coach purse or Armani suit, and then as many people to contribute towards it.

Take, for instance, the fact that a new Mac Book costs something like $2000. That’s what most people make in a month — if they’re lucky. But, asking a group of people to gift together reduces the out-of-pocket costs dramatically. With 12 people involved, that $2000 laptop now only costs each person $167. Still too steep? Get 20 people on board — that way each person only has to chip in $100.

The spectacle of a grown man getting a brand new iPhone and weeping openly is one to behold. The bigger and better deal becomes a matter of numbers. The more people involved, the better. Everyone is afforded a chance to give and the recipient enjoys a gift so tremendous, so unexpected, he or she will be reduced to unabashed gushing.

Most gifting sites shield the members of a gifting circle from one another. This ensure total anonymity, ensuring friendships and familial relations endure. No one knows how much the other has given. Though this can backfire in the sense that at times not enough money is raised for a specific gift, what is raised is given to the recipient in the form of a gift card. So, in a real sense, everyone wins with gifting.