Competition! Facebook Deals, Google Offers, Youtube video rentals
Two things to pay attention to today:
1) Facebook is introducing its own version of Groupon and Living Social for its 600-million-strong online social network. It's called Deals and it launches in five cities today: Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco. The online-social-couponing business is hot-hot-hot right now. Even Google -- of course -- is getting into it with its own "Google Offers", which is running a beta in Portland, Oregon, with early plans for New York City, Oakland, and San Francisco. Google, as you may remember, tried to buy Groupon for $6 billion, but got spurned, and now wants to build its own Groupon clone from scratch.
2) Online video: the streaming wars are beginning. Netflix is currently in the pole position, as it is carried on a broad range of devices, from mobile phones, to PCs/laptops and tablets, to gaming systems. Apple is on the chase with its Apple TV offering, with iTunes movie rentals and downloads. And Amazon Video on Demand is a pretty darn cool service, too -- especially on a Roku player.
But wait -- now we're hearing Google/Youtube is planning a vast expansion of its own paid streaming service for Hollywood movies. The Holy Grail in online streaming is getting early access to movies that just left theaters and are on DVD. Movie companies make money off DVD sales so they don't want to stream them online without meaningful revenue replacement. So if Google gets it right, this could be a big deal. Peter Kafka, of All Things D, confirmed the report and noted that "big studios including Sony, Time Warner’s Warner Bros. and Comcast’s Universal are on board. So are indies like Lionsgate."
All of this competition is potentially good for the consumer. Let's see how good it can get.
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Comments
How much are they going to charge for this, $25? I'd rather wait until it comes to Netflix. Or keep my viewing occupied through services like TVDevo website which offers both live and on-demand programming from around the world.
Posted by: Monica | April 26, 2011 4:50 PM
What Facebook doesn’t seem to have are feet on the street and telemarketers. The thousands of sales people that leaders like GroupOn and Living Social have on board definitely helps move local small businesses out of their inertia. Facebook will go fairly far with self serve. But how far?
Posted by: Atlanta Roofing | April 27, 2011 5:00 AM
This new deals from face book will definitely hits success because Facebook has already got first rank in social network sites so this new deal is really fantastic and very useful to consumers so registrations to facebook site will grow be very high automatically facebook users will gain with this deal.
Posted by: Prasad | April 27, 2011 7:30 AM
The difference between Facebook deals is without those "feet on the street" as Atlanta has mentioned results in considerable less overhead. Meaning they can take a smaller cut of each deal. Outside of that there isn't much differentiation between Facebook and Groupon & Living Social which is exactly what I'm trying to do with www.sliqq.com
Posted by: Scott | April 27, 2011 7:57 PM