So if you follow my twitter account you'll notice from about 9 in 10 links I post I'm a reddit fan. This year I signed up to redditgifts. Now redditgifts in case you don't know is where members of reddit can sign up to a huge community Secret Santa game. A Secret Santa that not only spans local areas, but whole countries and even continents (if you fancy throwing in some extra shipping fees).
My Secret Santa got me a shot glass chess set along with a flash drive. The chess-set instantly got a smile from the house mate. Chess has been played in the pub a few times and it's not like we could ever run out of things to put in the shot glasses. Unfortunately this gift was quickly taken off me by housemate so to be wrapped up for actual Christmas. But I'm sure that on Christmas Day this will get a lot of use out of during Christmas dinner.
The flash drive contained lots of goodies, wallpapers linking to various amusing memes, The Walking Dead comics (which I am trying to stop myself from reading as I'm enjoying the show a lot) and a bunch of movies, including the first Toy Story, which shall keep me entertained on Christmas Eve night when I cannot sleep.
Now the person I got to be Secret Santa for wasn't very forthcoming with clues. Even his redditgifts profile had nothing in it.
I checked all through his reddit account for some ideas. Seen a few things about a band that he liked. I googled the band and found they were touring. I thought briefly about getting tickets but I didnt want to get a gift that could only be used once and tied the person down.
So I checked his twitter account. And all I could see where a lot of replies to people. I tried facebook but his profile was protected. So I googled his name. I found out he produced and presented a podcast, made short movies but nothing gave me any idea as to what to get.
So for the next few days I read further and further in to his reddit comments and twitter feed until one day I spotted a tweet he had retweeted on the 2nd of September (thats some major digging/stalking right there). He had retweeted a David O'Doherty tweet. I instantly thought of the comedians book "100 Fact About Pandas," and knew that this was my gift.
I got an email last night from redditgifts saying my gift had been received and a comment was online. It seems that my Giftee enjoyed his present a lot, which has made me feel good :-) Yey.
Which is what Secret Santa is all about.
Redditgifts also have a stats page on info they collect when people submit they've sent a gift. This year 17,130 people took part over 90 countries across the World. Now although not all people sent gifts (some people are bad) 15,149 redditors did get in to the Christmas Spirit and sent gifts. A total of $572,105.16 was spent on gifts and shipping. That's a lot of love. The most spent was $1,506.90 (lucky person) with the average being $37.77. (All stats here)
That's certainly a lot of love for a community. And another reason why I enjoy reddit so much.
Make sure you check out the gallery page for some of the awesome presents that were gifted this year. Perhaps it might bring some inspiration on what to get someone you're stuck buying for.
Robbie
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