Does a family member buy a lot of stuff on Amazon? Perhaps your friend uses Amazon Instant Video to watch their favorite shows? Well, now you can make their lives a lot easier with a Prime membership.

Amazon announced today that it’s now letting customers purchase Amazon Prime memberships for friends and family through a new gifting system. Instead of trying to convince your parents that Amazon Prime is the best thing to happen to online shopping since, well, Amazon, you can now just buy them an annual membership for $79.

“Members have told us they want to give the gift of Prime and we are delighted to offer this new capability in time for the holidays,” said Greg Greeley, Vice President of Amazon Prime. “Our customers can now give the convenience of unlimited two-day shipping to family and friends – it’s a gift that can be enjoyed all year long. When you add in the huge selection of popular movies, TV shows and Kindle books already included in the membership, giving Prime is giving a year’s worth of convenience AND entertainment.”

We all know that Amazon Prime gets you free two-day shipping on nearly everything on the site, but a membership includes a number of other benefits. For starters, all Prime members get access to Prime Instant Video – a Netflix-like service that allows members to stream a large number of movies and TV shows. With plenty of exclusives and its own in-house produced TV shows, chances are a family member or friend will get a lot out of it.

If the family member is more of a book lover, a Prime membership will give them access to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library – a service that allows users to borrow eBooks at no extra cost with no due date. Prime members also get early access to one book published through Amazon Publishing per month.

All that is just icing on the cake, however, as the real star of the show is still the free two-day shipping. I’ve been a Prime member for four years and it really pays for itself in no time if you do the majority of your shopping on Amazon. If you have a family member that does the same and is still not a Prime member, this just might be the gift for them.

You can start the gifting process over at Amazon’s new “Give the Gift of Prime” site.

[Image: Amazon]