Facebook’s new “Social Deals” – Is this the Groupon/LivingSocial Challenger?

Social Deals is set to challenge the likes of Groupon and LivingSocial, but is Facebook doing the right thing?  Let’s take a look at Facebook Places vs Foursquare, did it do justice and become a true challenger?  Not really, yes I personally stopped using Foursquare, but not b/c of Facebook.  FB places just become another check-in site (like yelp).  It offered no real “reward” for checking in; at least with Foursquare department stores started offering promotion codes.

Now with Social Deals, Facebook has a lot of catching up to do.  As a heavy user of Groupon, Facebook needs to stay on top of their competitive edge and run with it.  Social Deals must be more user friendly, make it easier to purchase coupons and keep track of existing used and non-used coupons.  See what other people think…

Take a look at some screen shots of what the new deals page looks like on fb:

DEAL OVERVIEW PAGE

INDIVIDUAL DEAL PAGE


My first impression is 6/10 stars.  Facebook needs to provide additional value than Groupon.  Honestly, all of the sites have the same deals, but which one is going to make it EASIEST for me to use?  I sure hope Facebook improves this.  And…hopefully when I buy a Facebook Deal, the whold world doesn’t find out!