Facebook Offers rolls out in Asia, gives daily deal sites a run for their money

Facebook has launched a feature that allows users to get special deals from merchants within the social network.

The deals will appear on their news feeds, and after claiming a deal, an email will be sent to the user. The deal can then be redeemed by flashing the email at a store.

Facebook Offers is currently in beta and is being rolled out to selected businesses in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, US, and Turkey, according to The Verge.

All business will eventually be able to create their own deals by clicking the ‘offer’ button at the top of their Facebook Page Timeline.

Barring a backlash from users, Facebook Offers will give group buying sites like Groupon, LivingSocial and Deal.com.sg  a run for their money by replacing them as the middlemen between merchants and consumers, and an improved one.

For consumers, redeeming a deal on Facebook will be more convenient at times, since they won’t need to leave the social network. For merchants, it has a greater potential for virality, since sharing about the deal is easier.

Not only that, while merchants often have to split revenues with daily deal sites they engage with, Facebook Offers is slated to be completely free. That alone is a huge competitive advantage.

What remains to be determined is how much business Facebook can snatch from the incumbents.

For now, daily deal sites have an advantage on the mobile arena for the near term. That’s because using a daily deal app to hunt for special offers is an infinitely better experience than redeeming them through Facebook’s bloated mobile app.

Granted, conversion rates for deals on Facebook Offers could be much lower than those hosted on daily deal sites, since users won’t be actively seeking a discount when checking their friend’s updates.

But that may not matter to the merchant since no costs are involved in putting up a deal. They just have to make sure their ads don’t irritate the user too much.