Facebook's Groupon-killer is dead
Facebook is ending its Deals product soon after its April launch, the company said on August 26. The move came a couple of days after the social network chose to drop the mobile-only version of its location-based service Places.
From a Facebook statement provided to TechCrunch's MG Siegler:
From a Facebook statement provided to TechCrunch's MG Siegler:
After testing Deals for four months, we've decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks. We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses. We remain committed to building products to help local businesses connect with people, like Ads, Pages, Sponsored Stories and Check-in Deals. We've learned a lot from our test, and we'll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.
With daily deals sites cropping up on the regular, I'm actually stoked to see one fall, but I'm a bit off-balance that it was Facebook to drop off as opposed to, say, BuyWithMe or DailyCandy. Then again, I've never used Deals (or Groupon or LivingSocial or Google Offers, despite being a registered user of each). Then again there's Forrester Research analyst Shar VanBoskirk, who said in last week's "US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 to 2016" report that daily deals will eventually bubble and burst.
For what it's worth, Siegler reported that despite the Places semi-demise, Facebook will keep Check-In Deals. Another product I don't use.
