Facebook Tosses Daily Deals – An Intern’s Perspective

Facebook’s Daily Deals, a feature similar to that offered by the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial, has been abandoned by the company. Daily Deals, arranged by a sales team with local merchants, were emailed to Facebook users who signed up to the program. After four months of testing in places such as Atlanta, Dallas and San Francisco, Facebook has made the decision to stop its Deals program.

No reason was given for the decision to discontinue Facebook Deals, but Facebook remains positive, saying “We remain committed to building products to help local businesses connect with people, like Ads, Pages, and Sponsored Stories.” All of these connect local businesses with potential customers. The company is also sticking with its Check-in Deals feature. This lets Facebook users check in at local businesses and see offers from those merchants.

Being a college student on a limited budget, I am attracted to daily discounts because I cannot resist a good deal I know I’ll use. Why not save money on something you were going to buy anyway, right? That being said, I was anticipating the use of Facebook Deals to come to the Baltimore area. You can understand my disappointment when Facebook decided to pull back their daily deals before I even got a chance to use them. I support Facebook in its quest to stay competitive, but rather than abort Facebook Deals, I think they need to give their new idea a fair chance.

I suspect that Facebook Deals did not get off the ground because of stiff competition from similar offerings like Groupon and LivingSocial. Together, these two companies control nearly 75 percent of the business from daily deals across the country and Canada. I also wonder if consumer fatigue played a role in the disappearance of Facebook Deals because the market is becoming overly saturated with a flood of daily discounts. For example, after talking to some students in my business program, they tell me that the high volume of emails from daily deals they currently receive is overwhelming. Checking accounts daily to make sure deals don’t expire is exhausting. My classmates say they have become more selective, deleting deals more frequently and refusing to sign up to new sites.

As for me, I will always be loyal to Facebook for its many attractive and user friendly features. Facebook can consider these competitive threats a challenge and recommit to innovative new releases.