Looks like Facebook is cleaning house, or at least doing some summer purging, because right on the heels of killing its Places check-in feature, the social network is putting the kibosh on its Deals.
In a statement sent to Reuters over the weekend (and to us today), Facebook said:
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.
When it was introduced, the move put at least a scare into the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial, the two probably best known email bargain pushers trying to fend off a slew of other like-minded competitors which have multiplied faster than a zombie horde. By one count, more than 600 have hopped on the online bandwagon to flood consumers with daily deals. But at 40 million North American subscribers, Groupon, while formidable in its own right, is still small fry next to the potential buying power of Facebook's 750 million users.
Then again, Deals on Facebook is only available to a relatively small pool of cities (San Francisco, San Diego, Minneapolis, Dallas, St. Louis, Austin, Atlanta and Charlotte), and while some of the deals do look tempting ($20 for a pro hockey ticket to watch the loser of the Stanley Cup, for instance), the deals seem no different than the ones that are probably clogging up emails every day. Some seem a bit out there, even for this vein: $499 for an SUV (stretch, hopefully) to fit up to 14 for a 6-hour drive through wine country?
A Facebook spokesperson told us: "Facebook will continue to offer Deals through our partners on Facebook. All Deals that have been planned with our sales team will run as planned. All Deals that have been purchased will still be honored as previously stated."
And, while Facebook put Places check-ins on the guillotine, it appears it's going to keep the Deals check-in alive, according to Reuters: "The company also is sticking with its Check-in Deals offering. This lets Facebook users check in at local businesses and see offers from those merchants."
Huh? We're waiting to hear back from Facebook about that apparent mixed message.
UPDATE: A Facebook spokesperson told us: "Check-In Deals are still an important part of the marketing solutions Facebook provides. We’re still testing Check-In Deals and they are now available in 12 countries. They are not being phased out."
She directed us to this ClickZ story, which shows that Check-In Deals will have its place as part of Facebook's location tagging.
Will you miss Deals, or did it disappear in the deluge of such offers you're already getting?
More stories:
- Facebook kills 'Places' check-in feature
- How many Groupon rivals? Try 600
- Facebook to add photo filters to mobile app
- Facebook reaches 1 trillion page views in June
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