Facebook Launches Local Deal Service for Places
In a move that could bring millions of local and small business advertisers to the social network, Facebook launched a deal service for Places today. The service lets merchants push deals to their existing customers and attract new ones, according to Tim Kendall, Facebook’s director of monetization.
When users open up Facebook Places, they will see a listing of nearby venues, some which will have special icons indicating deals. They can pull up the deal, and with two clicks, they can claim it. When they go to the store or restaurant later, they can show the staff their Facebook app to redeem the deal.
The most interesting part of the product is that Facebook isn’t taking a cut of revenue for these discounts, posing a challenge to smaller competitors that use deal revenue as part of their business model. On a business’ Places page, they can set up an offer. There are four kinds:
- Individual deals, which reward a customer if they check-in once.
- Loyalty deals, which reward customers for a certain number of purchases or check-ins.
- Friend deals, which reward customers if they bring in extra friends.
- Charity deals, which allow businesses to donate to charity for every check-in they attract.
Facebook attracted more than 20 initial partners to launches the deal service. Gap is one of the first; the clothing company is giving away pairs of blue jeans to the first 10,000 customers who check-in.
Another partner is North Face, which will give $1 to support National Parks for every customer who checks-in. The Palms Hotel will be giving away a free third hotel night for people who stay two nights. The Golden State Warriors basketball team will let fans who check-in during November go to an exclusive event after the game with a player.
Facebook is opening up deals to 20,000 businesses initially and then will make it available to everyone over the next few months. The new deals service puts Facebook in even further competition with predecessors like Foursquare and Gowalla, which have offered similar coupons for months.
It also makes Facebook a potential rival to another big social deals company, Groupon, which is backed by the same venture investor Accel. Groupon offers a select number of deals a day in specific cities and it is reportedly working on a self-serve model, which will let store owners create their own deals.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg said Places deals are free now, which could undercut Groupon. But he said the company could consider making money from it in the future if it’s in the interest of the user community.
November 4th, 2010 at 12:14 am
[...] goes local business, enables merchants to push deals out to existing and new customers; [...]
November 4th, 2010 at 1:12 am
Ok Now This is going to be exciting!. It has created some buzz over the net already!
November 4th, 2010 at 3:06 am
[...] konnte Facebook eigenen Angaben zufolge 20 Partner für das Projekt gewinnen, darunter auch GAP. Das Bekleidungsunternehmen, [...]
November 4th, 2010 at 4:18 am
[...] unter “sichern” abspeichern, zum Anbieter gehen und seinen Deal einlösen. In seinem Blog beschreibt Facebook, dass bislang 20 Partner gewonnen werden konnten – noch nicht die Masse, [...]
November 4th, 2010 at 10:33 am
[...] Facebook Places + Deals— http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/11/03/facebook-launches-local-deal-service-for-places/ [...]
November 4th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Yes, this is exciting and could bring major changes…but let’s not create hype. It’s not going to bring in “millions of local and small businesses”.
Please.
That’s part of the problem with all of this. Teh solid majority of these local and small businesses don’t have people on board who will fully understand these concepts. And, as this picks up, it has to become more than just offering discounts. Not everything promotional will be price oriented. Companies don’t work that way. It affects branding.
November 15th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
[...] seeing a lot of hype on this, suggesting that millions of small and medium businesses (SMBs) will be joining, changing [...]
November 22nd, 2010 at 8:37 am
[...] has generated a lot of BUZZ lately with its unveiling of a new location based “Places” with local deals. Successful companies are integrating Facebook into their marketing strategies. Fortune 500 [...]
November 25th, 2010 at 8:51 am
[...] has generated a lot of BUZZ lately with its unveiling of a new location based “Places” with local deals. Successful companies are integrating Facebook into their marketing strategies. Fortune 500 [...]
January 25th, 2011 at 11:02 am
[...] far, Facebook has only monetized mobile users through its location-based promotions system Facebook Deals, which shows users and their friends discounts at local businesses when they check-in through [...]
January 31st, 2011 at 3:28 pm
[...] originally launched Deals with a handful of brands in November, but it was only available in the U.S. for iPhone and [...]
November 9th, 2011 at 12:14 am
[...] launched in the US in November, and in Europe in January, but has yet to see widespread adoption by [...]
March 26th, 2012 at 8:33 am
[...] Facebook shook up the local deals space with their Facebook Places announcement: the local deal platform which now competes directly with Foursquare, Yelp, Groupon, etc. Facebook [...]