The New Facebook Deals. Will it be the killer product for the current big guns in this arena, Groupon and Living Social?

Yesterday the giant that is Facebook, released a new product called "Deals". This is not to be confused with the "Places" Check-in Deals feature that was launched toward the end of 2010.

The Facebook Check-in Deals for businesses is free, whereas the new Facebook Deals will charge merchants for the deals. How much they will charge is still unknown, i would have thought it would be less than the likes of Groupon and Living Social who take a slice of the total overall sales.

Since the worldwide economic decline consumers are looking to save money wherever and whatever they buy. The Daily Deals and Discount Coupon market has become huge, there are new sites popping up every day.


Google has launched their version (currently in Beta while testing), calling it Google "Offers" after being turned down by Groupon for a reported $6 Billion acquisition offer.  

Google may be the biggest threat in this space. It has an extensive history in local and a slew of tools to help facilitate the success of a local business-based offers product. Even with the search engine’s recent Panda update, local seems to have come out ahead. Having a mobile platform like Android can’t hurt either.


Vinicius Vacanti who runs his own daily deals business called Yipit wrote an interesting article on the company blog "Why Facebook Deals Won't Kill Groupon, Living Social" and he has some valid reasons why.


Facebook however do have approximately 600 million subscribers and is THE largest Social Network in the world. 


Marshall Kirkpatrick who is Co-Editor and Vice President of Content Development at ReadWriteWeb wrote in an article The Number One Killer Feature of Facebook Deals: Structured, verified, meaningful demographic and taste data. You think the retailers with whom you redeem a Facebook Deal aren't going to be shown your favorite music, TV show, your education level, some level of details about your friends and much more - at least in aggregate? You're kidding yourself. That info is gold and it's going to be the real killer for Facebook Deals. Not just scale, not just the world's greatest viral marketing platform - but valuable data about each and every customer that can then be used to retarget marketing efforts in the future.


Will Facebook knock Groupon and Living Social off the top spots in this space, or will Google pull it out of the bag? Only time will tell! 
What do you think? Tell me in the comments below.