Facebook has recently announced its plans to expand its Deals program by offering exclusive online daily deals. The new program will allow Facebook users to purchase daily Deal vouchers and share the Deal through the social network with their friend.
The social network giant currently allows businesses to offer discounts and freebies to customers who check in through Facebook Places. Facebook is looking to expand this and test the new daily-deal offering.
A Facebook spokeswoman commented on the Facebook daily-deal saying, “Local businesses will be able to sign up to use this feature soon, and people will be able to find Deals in the coming weeks.”
The first five cities that the service will be tested in are Dallas, TX; Austin, TX; Atlanta, GA; San Francisco, CA and San Diego, CA.
Facebook already has its own sales team to sign up businesses for their Deals program and the social network will also “aggregate deals from nine other sites—Gilt Groupe’s Gilt City, Home Run, OpenTable, Pop Sugar City, KGB Deals, Plum District, Tippr, Reach Local and Zozi.”
Groupon has become huge in just the last couple years through featuring a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in cities around the world. Clearly, Facebook see’s how profitable this concept is.
Through launching its Deals program, Facebook hopes to grab share in the fast growing daily-deal industry. A report by BIA/Kelsey reveals that this industry “could generate up to $6.1 billion in sales in the U.S. alone by 2015.” If this catches on, Groupon could go away as fast as it came.
Jason Coon
