With the latest wave of changes to Facebook, many sources have reported that Facebook is killing off their Deals product.  This is true.  It is also false. Let me explain… no, there is too much, let me sum up:

Since Facebook feels that their platform should always have rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty, they go out of their way to use new product names on at least two different products simultaneously.  Just look at how many different ways “Like” can be used. So there are actually two different types of Deals on Facebook and one is going away.  That would be the Facebook Daily Deals which are Groupon-like in nature.  This product is definitely being ditched.  That’s good news for Groupon, but it does make many industry pundits wonder whether or not Groupon really has a sustainable long-term business model if Facebook doesn’t find it worth following.

Facebook Places Deals are, at least for the time being, staying.  These are the deals you set up on your Places page that customers can redeem by checking in.  Brick-and-mortar businesses have found these invaluable, and even though the mobile-only Places functionality is being phased out in favor of the new enhancements to place tagging in regular status updates, it makes sense that check-in Deals will stay.  Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time that Facebook favored their own internal agenda over common sense if they did decide to kill check-in deals, but for now they seem safe.

So what new features in Facebook are confusing you?