In what looks like a battle to take on the existing companies helping consumers to get local deals, Facebook today announced the launch of of “Deals on Facebook“. This is coming just a few months ago after the launch of its Check-In Deals, a service that competes directly with Foursquare. Check-in-Deals help you get special offers when you check in at local businesses from your mobile.
The company has therefore to go a step further and take the fight to win the deals industry to your facebook page. Facebook feels this new feature will help you to find fun experiences which you can then share with your favorite people. This feature is, however, only be tested in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco and Facebook expects to expand this test to other cities in the future.
How to Find Deals:
As a Facebook user, you can find deals in the following ways
- Get deals updates through email and notifications to find out about new deals in your area.
- Check out the Deals tab of your home page.
- If your friends chose to share this information, you may also see the deals friends buy or like in your News Feed.
What differentiates Deals on Facebook from others:
Deals gets social. One key feature of this new product is the fact most people now want to spend bulk of their time on the social network. It is, therefore, more important that you find interesting experiences around what you to do with friends. Facebook is working with partners and local businesses to help deliver the best social activities in your area. And once you have found a deal you like, having the deal on Facebook makes it easy to share, buy and plan with your friends.
What does this mean to local Deals Companies in NIgeria?
Local deal companies like Deal Dey, Deals Affair, Grop.ly, and several other local deals-offering companies may have to revisit their business model. According to Socialbakers, Facebook currently have 2,997,20 users in Nigeria and this means that Facebook can take on anyone in the deals-offering business.
Facebook has data about every user and this gives the company an advantage when it comes to user behavior. This also helps the company to have full understanding what users may be interested in buying. For instance, Facebook can alert your friends about a deal that you might like especially when you are approaching your birthday. You can receive information about the deals that your friends are buying etc.
Apart from “Deals on Facebook”, local deals-offering companies will have to battle with Google Offers, a deal-offering service launched by Google few days ago. Although this was launched in few cities, Google has the capacity to replicate this in other cities simultaneously of the pilot succeeds. However, it is worth noting that not all services / products launched by Google have succeeded. So, only time will tell if this will be another success product from the search giant.
Source: https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150159110592131
