Social Deals is set to challenge the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial, but is Facebook doing the right thing? Let’s take a look at Facebook Places vs Foursquare, did it do justice and become a true challenger? Not really, yes I personally stopped using Foursquare, but not b/c of Facebook. FB places just become another check-in site (like yelp). It offered no real “reward” for checking in; at least with Foursquare department stores started offering promotion codes.
Now with Social Deals, Facebook has a lot of catching up to do. As a heavy user of Groupon, Facebook needs to stay on top of their competitive edge and run with it. Social Deals must be more user friendly, make it easier to purchase coupons and keep track of existing used and non-used coupons. See what other people think…
Take a look at some screen shots of what the new deals page looks like on fb:
DEAL OVERVIEW PAGE
INDIVIDUAL DEAL PAGE
My first impression is 6/10 stars. Facebook needs to provide additional value than Groupon. Honestly, all of the sites have the same deals, but which one is going to make it EASIEST for me to use? I sure hope Facebook improves this. And…hopefully when I buy a Facebook Deal, the whold world doesn’t find out!
With the issues of privacy that Facebook has dealt with (along with your last statement of “hopefully when I buy a Facebook Deal, the whole world doesn’t find out!”), do you think some people, especially Groupon users like yourself and myself, are going to be hesitant to use Facebook Deals? I’m curious to see the response of this new offering from Facebook.
Hi Kyle, the Facebook privacy issues will only negatively affect user consumption IF we have no way of saying if “we want this deal posted on FB.” If the default is to post the deal on FB, I’ll skip Social Deals and stick with Groupon. What if I’m buying something special for a friend or family member, I don’t want them finding out on FB. For me though, I still prefer Groupon over LivingSocial…and I haven’t been able to use Social Deals on my iPhone yet. Maybe in the next update?
Thanks for stopping by!