Facebook launches Places Deals in Europe – But the media keeps confusing it with Groupon
Now, I really don’t think my esteemed colleagues in the media are wilfully making this mistake. But in the excitement of a new launch, and the repeated denials of Facebook people like Joanna Shields (head of Europe) that this was Groupon-u-like, it feels like this is a great angle to go with. The trouble is – it’s wrong. If anything Facebook Deals will almost certainly kill off the ability of Foursquare to scale in Europe now – not Groupon. Facebook has boots on the ground in Europe. It has a ridiculously powerful team in Shields and partnerships chief Christian Hernandez, and they are doing deals with major partners like Starbucks like there is no tomorrow.
Foursquare’s ability to do check-in offers is now in real trouble in Europe, despite a wave of excellent schmoozing by co-founder Dennis Crowley at last week’s DLD conference in Munich. However, it may well be a boon to long-time players in Europe like Qype and to a lesser extent Yelp (which is smaller here), which will now be in a position to ride the wave of mainstream adoption.