It's your out-of-state friend's birthday, and you want to buy him a drink, but hopping on a plane to say hi at the bar just isn't feasible right now.

That's where Give Real steps in.

The fledgling start-up, which has been in the works for a little more than a year, allows patrons to purchase food or beverage credits for their friends online at www.givereal.com. Recipients input their credit card information (any major credit card works), and the gift appears on their credit or debit card—something a little more personal than writing, "Happy birthday" or "Congratulations on your graduation" on someone's Facebook wall.

The Facebook crowd is one that Give Real is targeting, with Give Real partnering up with Facebook and allowing Facebook users to install a Give Real application on their Facebook profiles. This way, users can see who else has registered for free with Give Real, and sending credits is easy.

"We believe that Give Real has the opportunity to prove how successful an e-commerce platform can be by social networks like Facebook," said Give Real co-founder Adam Ludwig, 25. "So far Facebook has been a great, great source of traffic and a great platform to integrate with, and we plan to do a lot more with Facebook in the future."

Ludwig said Facebook has given Give Real about half its business, and Give Real has over 18,000 members who have created an account or installed the Facebook application Give Real drinks.

While the Give Real website prompts users to suggest cocktails to give, the dollar amount bestowed may be used at any bar, restaurant or café in the country, for not only cocktails but also for non-alcoholic beverages and food. There are more than 500,000 eligible places, as categorized by major credit card companies.

Give Real suggests giving a credit of $10, but the minimum is only $1, with a $0.90 transaction fee on any gift.

One Give Real user, Mariko McDonagh, has used the service to give over 10 gifts and has also received credits herself. She said she likes that Give Real allows her to give her friends the freedom to choose their gifts and not be stuck with whatever gift card they get.

"I don't necessarily want to force my friends to go, for example, to The Cheesecake Factory, whereas with this application, you can really give someone a gift that's not an inconvenience to them," McDonagh, a 24-year-old Los Angeles resident, said. "I think that's what's really great about it, because you can sort of virtually take them out for a drink to a place they would have gone anyway."

That idea is part of what spurred Give Real, a company started by Princeton graduates and former dorm roommates Ludwig and co-founder Patrick Ledbetter. The friends wanted a way to keep in touch with friends after graduation, and Give Real was born.

"It's a really, really fragmented industry," Ludwig said. "It would be really difficult, even with a massive sales force, to get even a fraction of all the bars to opt into a coupon code or some type of mobile code or a physical card, etc. We thought long and hard about this particular logistical problem and realized we could set up a gift-giving platform that didn't require any opt-in from those merchants at all, but instead leveraged data that all the credit cards store on the back end about each merchant."

Now the company has grown to a team of 10, and Ludwig and Ledbetter said their experiences back in college as friends have made their business partnership successful.

"We definitely have very impassioned discussion," Ledbetter, 24, said. "We both have very strong ideas. One of the benefits of us being long-time friends is we don't have to walk around on eggshells."

One of the company's goals is to eventually replace gift cards, which may have expiration dates or be easily lost.

Give Real is also working on brand marketing partnerships that will give beverage brands placement inside of Give Real platforms.

For now, users like McDonagh are enjoying the application for its ability to help re-kindle friendships across the country.

"It's a really good way to keep that relationship real, and if you give someone a present, they're obviously going to call you or send you an e-mail and say thanks and re-connect with you," McDonagh said. "I think the key to the success is just word of mouth because a company like that just really needs to be promoted to friends by friends."