Facebook Snatches Up FourSquare Functionality With DEALS

Yesterday, Facebook launched DEALS, aimed at allowing local businesses to present users with special offers when you check in to their “Place” on Facebook.

On their announcement page, many Facebook users raved about this “innovative” move by the social network. This may be an indicator that Facebook was quick enough to market with this copycat functionality and enough Facebook users may not have jumped on the FourSquare bandwagon yet.

Personally, I still think that Facebook is spreading themselves thin and will wind up in the same boat as MySpace. (remember that phenomenon?)

Deals will only be available in the United States initially.

Groupon Uses Multi-Domain Strategy to Dominate SERPs

The consumer packaged goods industry has been fighting for real estate in store shelves for decades. Now, the battle for search engine results page (SERP) real estate is on. Knowing that many consumers turn to search engines for “unbiased” information on companies that they are ready to make a transaction with, companies are getting savvy and putting an effort towards managing their brand reputation in the SERP on major search engines.

One effective way to accomplish this is by maintaining multiple, branded web properties and social profiles. Groupon, a popular social coupon website is doing this by having distinct web properties with unique domains for different audiences, such as grouponworks.com for prospective clients and liveoffgroupon.com to support a consumer-focused campaign. Currently, they completely control 8 of the top 11 results in Google for their name and indirectly control the content on Wikipedia, which holds the 5th position.