Posts Tagged ‘rules of the white elephant exchange’

The social networks can now be used for friendly larceny, with the launch of an online white elephant gift exchange party called AlbinoPhant.

This Facebook application allows family and friends the opportunity to party together in a virtual gift exchange, just like they would if gathered together in one location. They exchange real gifts, share friendly banter and enjoy the holiday spirit, through the online party.

Gift exchange parties are social events that focus on sharing gifts with family and friends and then “stealing” gifts from one another in an organized party game.

www.albinophant.com brings people together to participate in the party on a common game-play page, where wrapped gifts are displayed, opened, stolen and where comments are shared. This application facilitates gift giving among those who would be sharing gifts with each other anyway. AlbinoPhant just provides a fun, conversational and social way to pass out the gifts.

Traditional white elephant parties build lively conversation and great stories around the gifts as they are opened. With the enhanced sharing tools on the web, the online version allows more expressive conversation than ever before. The AlbinoPhant comment stream allows party participants the opportunity to post YouTube videos and images to assist in making the exchange party a real fun game. There are even opportunities to share some of the conversation outside of the party in other social networks, allowing the party atmosphere to spill over in other corners of the web.

The online white elephant party uses a combination of eCommerce and social networking tools to build the party system. AlbinoPhant is a gift purchasing and sharing facilitator, displaying hundreds of Amazon items in level pricing markets for convenient shopping. The host and each party participant use these single pricing markets ($15 to $50) to select gifts for the party. This leveling feature is used to keep the gift spending closer to equal among all of the players, reducing the “big-spender/cheap-skate” issues.

When all of the gifts are virtually wrapped, opened, discussed, stolen and re-stolen, the game ends. The application’s management system then sorts out who gets which real gift and sees that each present is delivered to the correct address.

The online gift exchange is a labor of love by the Christensen family, who are new to Facebook application development. The Christensen’s have tested the online gift swap party with their scattered family members for several years. They hired a team of Facebook developers and other web professionals to take their simple family party exchange and turn it into a fully operational Facebook application. Now they are eager to share this fun exchange, AlbinoPhant, with others.

This holiday season the networks will play host to thousands of gift thieves and promote friendly banter to liven up holiday parties. What is more social than a lively party?

To see press release go to http://myprgenie.com/3333

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PartyWeDo
The AlbinoPhant Creators
Your Party 2.0 Specialists

Because the white elephant style of gift exchange game is played in so many places, there are lots of different versions of it, with variations on the rules. So what is the standard method for playing the game? Well, I’ve done some research for you (in my role as Party Planner at the palace!) and have come up with the most popular rules of play for white elephant gift exchange parties, for anyone who’s not quite sure how it all works.

So, firstly – and fairly obviously – there are gifts. Usually there will be a theme and/or a price limit, and each player brings one gift accordingly. The gift is wrapped, and all gifts are usually placed anonymously on a table.  A system is set in place to determine the order of play. This can be anything from the alphabetical order of names to each player choosing a folded piece of paper which, when opened, will tell them their number – number one plays first, and so on. And now the fun begins! The first player chooses a gift and opens it. Everyone gets to see it and admire it, and then the second player gets to choose a gift. This time, however, the player can choose to either unwrap another gift from the table, or to “steal” the previous player’s gift from right under their nose!

To make things more interesting and tactical, most versions of the game include a rule where gifts are “frozen” or “dead” after they have been “stolen” twice – which means that if you are the third owner of a gift, no one can take it from you. The game ends when the last wrapped gift is opened. Each player leaves with the gift that they now hold! There are lots of other twists and variations and extra rules, of course, but these are the most common rules of play.

What rules do you use for your White Elephant or Yankee Swap party?

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Princess Phant
Daughter of the King of Burma
Caretaker of the AlbinoPhant Parties