Facebook has introduced a new ‘Deals’ service that will allow local business to promote special offers to customers through Facebook’s Places location feature.
Deals is currently a new application within Facebook’s freshly updated iPhone application and is available to Android users via a mobile web page.
Using Places, users can find deals via a yellow icon that’s placed next to the name of a business or retail outlet in the iPhone app’s ‘Nearby Places’ list. When they tap on the icon a coupon appears on their phone which they can show at the outlet to claim the deal.
There will be four types of deals available. Individual Deals will encompass discounts and other rewards, Friend Deals will require getting friends involved to claim discounts, Loyalty Deals will apply to regular customers and Charity Deals will allow users to donate to a cause.
Facebook will not charge businesses to list coupons and deals through its mobile app, but will encourage businesses to buy online advertising on Facebook to publicise their offerings.
Facebook’s Deals service in influenced by other location-based services such as Foursquare, but its 500 million-strong user-base gives it a clear advantage over similar social media services.
According to Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, over 200 million people now access Facebook through their mobile – triple the number doing so last year.
The move to add Deals to Places also steps up Facebook’s competition with Google, as both companies seek to tap into the growing market for mobile advertising. Google has recently taken steps to help bring small businesses online and help them be found more easily.
For the meantime Deals will only be available in the US, but Facebook plans to roll it out more widely in future.
(source:coastdigital.co.uk)
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