Facebook Shutting Down Deals Service

Facebook is closing down its Groupon-style deals service after four months.

The Facebook deals service offered through its website competed with other incumbents in the space such as Groupon and LivingSocial. Reuters earlier reported the news.

Here is the statement from a Facebook spokesperson:

“After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks. We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses.  We remain committed to building products to help local businesses connect with people, like Ads, Pages, Sponsored Stories, and Check-in Deals. We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.”

Facebook has been sourcing some of its own deals, but many of the deals were from third-party daily deals companies such as Gilt Groupe’s Gilt City; local deals service Home Run; restaurant website OpenTable; women-focused PopSugar City, and outdoor-oriented Zozi.

When I interviewed the head of Facebook Deals, Emily White, in May she emphasized that Facebook deals were for friends to interact, not just for people to get a deal:

White described Facebook’s thinking on Deals coming from its focus on social interaction between friends. Facebook Deals gives people a way to hang out in real life and is designed to work with “normal human behavior.” The company is focusing on deals that are experiences people can do together and “create memories”–a wine tasting or a photography class, rather than say, discounted tax preparation. And for Facebook’s business, it also brings e-commerce into Facebook for merchants.

The ad sales model for local deals of hiring a massive salesforce, as Groupon has, never seemed to jibe with Facebook’s ad model, which emphasizes self serve ads outside of major deals. Facebook also prides itself on its engineering-focused low headcount, which the Groupon model doesn’t allow. And aggregating deals from other sites was not really unique.

Also this week, Facebook ended its check-in feature and replaced it with a related location-tagging feature.

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Lamebook Keeps Name In Settlement With Facebook

 

Parody site Lamebook and social networking giant Facebook have ended their legal battle with an agreement calling for Lamebook to retain its name but add a disclaimer to its site.

 

“We are pleased to arrive at an agreement that protects Facebook’s brand and trademark and allows for Lamebook’s continued operation,” the companies said in a joint statement. “The parties are now satisfied that users are not likely to be confused.”

Lamebook, which says it allows users to submit the “funny, ridiculous, and outright crazy posts that can be found on your favorite social networking site,” has also agreed that it won’t seek to trademark its name.

The settlement resolves a dispute that dates back to July, when Facebook demanded that Lamebook.com cease and desist using its name. Facebook said at the time that it objected to “attempts to create brand names that trade off of Facebook’s fame.”

The Austin, Texas-based Lamebook.com responded by filing a case against Facebook in U.S. District Court in the Western District Court of Texas. Lamebook sought a ruling that it doesn’t violate Facebook’s trademark because it isn’t in competition with the site. That matter was withdrawn on Thursday pursuant to the settlement agreement.

Lamebook isn’t the only company to tangle with Facebook about a name. The social-networking site also is litigating a trademark infringement case in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against Teachbook.com, a site for teachers.

Facebook alleges in that case that Web users will mistakenly think that Teachbook’s name is likely to dupe the public into thinking it’s “endorsed or sponsored” by Facebook.

Teachbook counters that the only common feature its trademark shares with Facebook is “the indistinct, generic word book.” The company has asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit.

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