Facebook Deals on the way out?

It looks like it could be all over for Facebook Deals. Speaking to Facebook on Friday about rolling out a campaign based around Deals for one of my clients, I was quite surprised when they said that Deals was a 'test' and that it hadn't been that successful and that they weren't sure what was going to happen with the service.

I remember the large dollop of hype that surrounded the launch last year, with brands like Argos and Debenhams as launch partners. I really had high hopes for it.

From my discussion, it seems that the main barriers to up take are:

1. Implementing Facebook Deals by, say, a supermarket or restaurant chain, requires significant investment in a back end system that monitors, tallies and verifies the Deals taken by customers across all stores.
2. All checkout and front of house staff need to be trained to process the Deals.
3. Brands need to go through Facebook and support Deals with a significant amount of advertising.

I guess you could argue no 3 might be the big sticking point and that maybe Facebook hindered adoption by not making it free, like other elements of Facebook. However, I reckon the implementation and fulfilment barriers are pretty huge for most brands. And I haven't come across many [any] case studies of brands using Deals effectively. 

It's a shame Deals might be switched off as I thought it was a really nifty idea. Oh well, back to sending out downloadable coupons:)