Facebook Kills 'Deals'

Lots of bloodshed at Facebook this week: First 'Places' was axed. Now its four-month-old Groupon-competitor, 'Deals', is officially being killed off. "After testing Deals for four months, we've decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks," explained Facebook in a statement sent to Reuters yesterday. "We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses. We've learned a lot from our test and we'll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses."

"Deals was one of Facebook’s particularly undifferentiated products—it was an almost perfect replica of offerings from Groupon, LivingSocial, Google, and others," writes Liz Gannes at All Things Digital, and its exit from the game should be good news for Groupon. "I don't believe this means daily deals are not a viable business," one industry tracker tells Reuters. "It more suggests that large media and tech companies can't just 'turn on' daily deals and expect them to work. It has to be more thoughtfully integrated into their existing product." (More Facebook stories.)