Facebook is ending its Deals -- the daily discounts from local businesses looking to cash in on the platform's 700-plus-million users.
"We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses," Facebook said in a statement. "We've learned a lot from our test and we'll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses."
FB launched Facebook Deals in April, looking to go head-on with Groupon and LivingSocial -- two pre-existing, established daily-deal companies.
Facebook's stated commitment to provide a platform of hundreds of millions of users to "the best in their space" may be at play here. The daily deals category is a sales-and-spin business, requiring infrastructure, sales people, etc.
The company's time and money may be better spent on better ad targeting and delivery. You know, the things Google's good at.
