Von Marcel Weiß und Jochen Krisch
Nach Twitter zieht sich nun mit Facebook der zweite Internetplattformprovider von dem Versuch zurück, Live Shopping vertikal in die Plattform zu integrieren, wie Reuters berichtet:
"After testing Deals for four months, we've decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks," the company said on Friday in a statement emailed to Reuters.
"We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses," Facebook added in the statement. "We've learned a lot from our test and we'll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses."
Damit wirft einer der potenziell gefährlichsten Konkurrenten von Groupon das Handtuch. Im April beschrieben wir ("Was Facebook mit den Social Deals besser macht als andere"), warum Facebook mit seinem Mix aus Newsfeed, Fanpage und Email-Kanal noch am besten positioniert war.
Doch wie Twitter scheint auch Facebook den Arbeitsaufwand unterschätzt und nicht genügend Man-Power in das Deals-Programm gesteckt zu haben:
"Facebook never put its full might behind Deals. It initially injected stories into the news feed asking users to sign up for the service, and later promoted the pre-paid offers with emails and real estate in the sidebar."
"In past reviews of the product, we criticized Deals regarding the quality of the experiences offered , the sometimes shallow discounts, and the way the experiences were ptiched to users.
Had Facebook subsidized businesses to provide deeper discounts on attractive experiences, and came up with a more compelling design for the Deals-browsing app, the results of the tests might have been different."
Oder wie Marshall Kirkpatrick, einer der vielen, die in Facebook Deals schon einen "Groupon Killer" gesehen haben, auf ReadWriteWeb zusammenfasst:
"That's a lesson that any business should remember in a time of rapid change: the fundamentals and execution still matter, a lot."
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