At the Facebook event Facebook announced the arrival of their Deals platform, which enables local merchants to offer and target deal to users of Facebook and is built around Facebook Places and enables Facebook users to search for deals on their mobile phone.

According to an article over on Digital Journal by Chris Hogg, Facebook’s new Deals platform could compete against Groupon. Apparently the new Facebook Deals platform allows users to search for specials close to them without having to pay Facebook anything.

With Facebook Deals the mobile phone user can see which deals their Facebook friends have been offered, have purchased. Facebook has said Deals resolves the problem of getting local businesses online and that the platform delivers a reason for those businesses to be online.

However, Facebook Deals which is only available in the US at the moment offers deals without taking a cut and thus could possible cause a rather large dent in sales from Groupon which is the leading deal-of-the-day website which offers discounts on just about everything. So Facebook Deals does have the potential to compete against the likes of Groupon.