Facebook began offering a deals program on Tuesday similar to the online bargains made popular by Groupon, LivingSocial and other companies.
Deals on Facebook are initially only available in five US cities — Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco — but the social network said it hopes to extend the feature to other cities in the future.
The move is the latest bid by the California-based social network to expand its revenue stream beyond advertising and an attempt to carve out a niche in the rapidly growing online bargain space.
Chicago-based Groupon, which offers subscribers coupons for discounts on a broad range of consumer goods and services, has enjoyed a spectacular rise since its founding in 2008 and rejected a reported US$5 billion takeover offer from Google last year.
Google is currently testing its own online coupon program, Google Offers, in Portland, Oregon.
While many of the offers on Groupon involve solo activities or purchases, Facebook, which has more than 500 million members, said its deals program will emphasize group activities.
“While many deals on Facebook offer discounts, it’s more important to us that you find interesting experiences around you to do with friends,” Emily White, director of local at Facebook, said in a blog post.
“We’ve worked with partners and local businesses to help deliver the best social activities,” White said. “And once you’ve found a deal you like, having the deal on Facebook makes it easy to share, buy and plan with your friends.”
Separately, News Corp is seeking more than US$100 million for Myspace and about half a dozen private equity firms and companies are expected to submit bids by the end of this week, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
The newspaper, citing “people familiar with the matter,” said the companies considering making an offer for Myspace include private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, Redscout Ventures and Criterion Capital Partners, owner of the Bebo social network.
The Journal said News Corp has also had talks with a Chinese Internet company about a potential deal for the ailing social network.
It said online music video site Vevo had looked at a potential deal with Myspace, but the company’s interest had waned.
The News Corp-owned newspaper said News Corp. is seeking bids of no less than US$100 million for Myspace, which it bought in 2005 for US$580 million.
The Journal said News Corp expects to be able to announce a Myspace deal around June.
Facebook has grown to more than 500 million members while Myspace’s numbers have dwindled. Earlier this year, MySpace cut some 500 jobs, nearly half its staff.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained