Facebook launched its much-anticipated attack on Groupon and Living Social tonight, unveiling the Facebook Deals service in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco. The New York Times has the news, noting that the service will allow friends to share deals with one another and see when a friend buys something. Facebook also is looking at expanding the concept of daily deals beyond email to individuals’ news feeds on the social networking site.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that users of Facebook Deals will be able to purchase the daily deals either with a credit card or with Facebook Credits.
Tippr, the Seattle white label daily deal site led by entrepreneur Martin Tobias, is jumping on the Facebook action as are a number of other daily deal companies. (More on an exciting Seattle area daily deal startup with high-profile founders in a few hours, so check back after midnight for the news).
A spokeswoman for Tippr said that the company is one of many supporting the Facebook Deals offering. Here’s how Tippr’s service works with the offering:
“In addition to using their own sales force to sell deals to local merchants, Facebook is partnering with Tippr (among others) to aggregate and display Tippr’s merchant deals via Facebook under the Facebook Deals umbrella. Merchants featured on Tippr.com and the daily deal sites operating on the PoweredByTippr platform now have the opportunity to also run on Facebook Deals. Tippr.com deals will be available to Facebook members via Deals in five test cities starting tomorrow.
Here’s more from Tippr’s press release:
“By teaming up with Facebook Deals, the PoweredByTippr platform provides additional visibility for merchants and allows them to share their deals with a socially active and influential group of consumers. The PoweredByTippr platform will provide a streamlined approach for publishers to showcase daily deals to Facebook’s more than 500 million users.”
