Finding ways to offset the high costs of holiday giving can be quite a challenge, especially for large families. The cost of the gift(s), along with shipping, insurance and other expenses can drive up your gift investment so high that you may have second thoughts before you actually give it to the intended.

Wouldn’t it be a neat idea if you could actually give those nice gifts, especially stuff that you would even want, and not feel such a sticker shock after you’re done? It sure would make gift-giving a whole lot easier and much more pleasant.

One of the most popular online consumer stores on the planet, eBay, has developed a pretty cool software application tool that brings together friends and family to give those gifts that create smiles. They’ve developed a new application called eBay Group Gifts that is looking pretty promising for the upcoming holiday season.

The application integrates social media tools, like Facebook and Twitter, organize and manage costs for fixed price product listings that friends and family members can share together and reduce the overall cost of any item. It’s quite cost-effective in encouraging large groups to give those really nice gifts without sacrificing quality and without worrying about breaking their bank accounts.

The application has become a permanent fixture on eBay.com and is also a live application on Facebook. A person’s friends list on Facebook can view the application on the person’s page as well as sharing update statuses, discussing costs, product items, etc. The integration between the two systems with eBay and Facebook will make it very convenient and accommodating, especially for those family members who live in different areas of the country or the world.

The application looks very promising because of the social communicating aspect of it, and also that it can all be done instantaneously with everybody’s cooperation. The only foreseeable problem is everybody agreeing on what gift to actually give!