Facebook Ditches Deals After Only Four Months

The GroupOn-like service will go dark soon but Facebook will "continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses"

Facebook is abandoning their GroupOn-like Deals product. Launched four months to the day (almost), Deals worked in tandem with the also recently axed Places product, so it's not a total surprise that the Deals is also done. Liz Gannes at AllThingsD reports:

Deals was one of Facebook’s particularly undifferentiated products--it was an almost perfect replica of offerings from Groupon, LivingSocial, Google and others. Facebook’s attempt at a novel twist was that its deals were things users could do with their friends, and that it syndicated deals from other providers including Gilt City, HomeRun and OpenTable. Users could also pay for Deals using Facebook Credits, though Facebook hasmaintained that its payments product is primarily for games on its platform.

Facebook said in a statement that the program will end "in the coming weeks" but they'll "continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses."