Facebook is currently testing a new “Facebook Deals” service which enables businesses to provide deals whenever visitors check-in to a physical store. The new service is being tested with a limited number of partners, and all we currently have access to is a copy of an email sent from Facebook confirming one of the first deals being tested.
As the image below depicts, this company (who’s identity is being hidden to protect them) has had their first deal approved. The deal involves rewarding a Facebook user with a free product when 3 of a user’s friends are tagged at a specific place. The creators of deals can determine the threshold required to earn a deal. One of the major criticisms of many of the existing check-in services (Foursquare, Gowalla, and even Facebook) is the lack of incentives for checking in to various locations.
However Facebook is already testing a deals service a couple months after first launching the Places product. Whether or not Facebook is charging for the service we aren’t quite sure. Ultimately any number of deals that Facebook can get launched on their site will help drive more users to check-in places. For the time being all we have access to is a copy of the email below which confirms the launch of a deal on a Facebook Page.
As these deals are rolled out there’s no doubt that we’ll learn more about this new service. According to the email, details of the service will be listed via http://www.facebook.com/deals. Since we aren’t part of the test program we can’t view this page however. If you find that you are able to access the page or the help page listed below please send us a screenshot!
We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment and will update this post if we find out any more details.
Update
Facebook has provided the following statement: “As you know, we don’t comment on speculation. We have nothing to share at this time.” This doesn’t appear to be speculation however based on the email below. I guess Facebook wants to stay silent on this. I should add that our source is extremely reliable, confirmed working for a relatively large interactive agency.
Update 2
Another person just pointed out that the email includes the statement “Facebook followers”, something that the company typically wouldn’t use as the term is technically “fans”.
Source: All Facebook
Thursday, October 28, 2010