When Facebook Deals launched on Wednesday, an impressive raft of launch partners were already signed up. The Palms in Las Vegas was giving away a third night free, Chipotle was giving away a second entree on the house, and Gap said it would be giving away 10,000 pairs of jeans on a date to be determined.
When I arrived at work this morning, it was clear that the Gap promotion was happening today. More than a dozen people were lined up outside the Gap across the street from our office.
After dropping my bag, I grabbed a notepad and my iPhone, and darted over to see if I could be one of the lucky ones to claim the Deal.
I walked in just as the store opened at 10am, opened the Facebook app on my iPhone4, and checked-in at the Gap with the Places feature. This being San Francisco, the connection was a bit slow. But soon enough, a screen came up offering me the deal. I clicked that button, and another screen appeared with the coupon.
Already a customer of the Gap, I knew my size and fit, so I picked up a pair of Standard dark blue 1969s, and proceeded to the cash register. There, the teller checked my iPhone, and handed over my new jeans, which retail for $54.50.
I was lucky though. To evenly distribute the 10,000 jeans around the country, Gap allocated just 25 pairs per store. I was the 21st person to check-in to the Gap on Post Street, so just barely made it. People who check-in later in the day get 40 per cent off one item.
The store manager at the Gap said there were more people than usual for this time on Friday morning. “It’s a great traffic driver,” she said.
That’s precisely what Facebook Deals are about. With the right promotion, Deals can get people off the street and into stores. Conveniently for Facebook, it also gets them sharing their location with friends, adding yet one more valuable piece of information to the ever-expanding social graph.
And Gap was a smart choice for a launch partner. When Groupon did its first national deal in August, it chose the Gap. The results were impressive. It sold 400,000 Groupons, generating $11m in revenue, and sending nearly a half-million customers into Gap stores.
But Facebook Deals don’t look to be a threat to Groupon. Because Deals have to be found and claimed at a physical location, there’s still plenty of room for email blasts from Groupon and similar services, offering me deals to restaurants on the other side of town. When I talked to Forrester Research analyst Augie Ray on Wednesday, he said the real threat was to Foursquare and other check-in services, which simply don’t have the scale to roll out Deals this big.
It’s a safe bet that many of the people claiming Gap jeans today wouldn’t otherwise be checking-in with Facebook Places, or shopping at the Gap, were it not for the promotion. Which means Facebook Deals, just three days old, is already changing consumer behaviour. And that’s a big deal.
