

Facebook shuts down Deals - ltamake
http://www.slashgear.com/facebook-shuts-down-deals-program-after-4-months-27174664/

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ForrestN
This news can be interpreted according to your affinity for Groupon. If you're
skeptical, this is yet another strike against the model, the canary in the
coal mine. If you're optimistic about Groupon, this is a win, a step toward
answering the claim that there's no means for them to outcompete all of the
clones.

It will be interesting to see if any more details come out, and if it's
possible at all to establish which interpretation is closer to the truth.

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jerf
Can I throw in "Clearly, Facebook is in the end-stages of negotiation to
acquire Groupon!"? I mean, as long as we're all staring at tea leaves, let's
have some fun.

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robryan
Actually, a partnership with a current deals site I think would be a great
idea. Facebook can bring in an audience for free but not have to worry about
finding deals.

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ltamake
Can't imagine Facebook would partner with a site. They'd probably try to buy
it and then intrgrate it as a feature in Facebook itself.

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mikeknoop
Stack Overflow?

<http://facebook.stackoverflow.com>

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hullo
Running a successful deals program in the current (competitive) market
requires two things that it seems Facebook isn't much inclined to provide: (1)
non-engineer staffing, to find and close deals with merchants and (2) customer
service.

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ary
This coupled with the abandoning of Places makes me think Facebook is
undergoing a serious narrowing of focus. While I'm clearly not a fan (as you
can probably judge from my comments), I'd still like to see a company that
gets lots of press do something innovative or, in absence of that, just new
and different. The pessimist in me thinks it will be yet another web platform
play.

~~~
saurik
They did not abandon Places... I'd even say they did the exact opposite: they
integrated the feature into everything, so instead of just being able to say
"I'm here now", you can now state that /anything/ occurred there (and at any
time in the past, when relevant) by tagging things like status updates or
pictures with Places. You can even get exactly the old behavior by making a
post that includes only a location, and no status. I really have no clue how
this crazy rumor started that they abandoned or discontinued Places :(.

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ThomPete
It started beecause they are taking it out of the mobile App as far as I
remember. If true I don't understand why they couldn't just add the features
to the app instead of removing one of the most useful features of Facebook.

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mathattack
Very interesting. It's clear that Groupon is willing to dedicate a lot of pre-
IPO capital to the project. Facebook probably figures that it's not worth
giving up being profitable to do. At least not yet.

In many cases the second or third mover can still win. Think Yahoo and then
Google in search. (Whatever did happen to Altavista?)

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socialmediaking
The area that Groupon really shines in, and that Google was trying to acquire,
is the vast number of local salespeople on the ground. Customer service and
interaction are not Facebook's strong points.

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learc83
Local salespeople on the ground?

Doesn't Groupon just have one giant call center in Chicago?

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nedwin
They're not shutting down deals. They're shutting down the desktop version -
the mobile deals product still lives.

I think this is a sign that people are more likely to use a deals product when
it's relevant to their location and current activity.

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thatjoshguy
Well, not even. Facebook Check-in deals launched in Australia, with KFC being
a big partner. It was expected that the average store would see 150 people
redeem the deal a week when in reality each store would be lucky to get 1 a
day, most being from KFC staff.

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nedwin
I work with 2 of the media agencies who do these bookings, one of which
handles KFC.

Results haven't been great but it's a fledgling product. There is a lot of
consumer awareness to be done to get it going.

The brands are not about to stop, I believe they see it as an experiment that
will hopefully pay off.

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dotcoma
Is Groupon next?

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aneth
It may be more lucrative to partner with deal sites and take a cut of revenue
through ads and the like - without the expense. In some way, Facebook Deals is
like Google getting into ecommerce - it's better just to be a middle man and
sell ads.

