Places?
Any reference for the quote that Facebook has cabncelled places? Haven't seen it reported elsewhere.
After its four-month test, Facebook has decided that whatever form its entry into the “local deals” market takes, it won’t look like Facebook Deals, which will be shuttered in the coming weeks. Deals sites, in which businesses tip money into the pockets of middlemen so they can offer notional discounts for Brazilian waxes, are …
This article is illustrative of the poison that is (largely) american business. Our firms are increasingly driven by "marketing people" (caveat: I am sure that many, many marketing people are fine human beings, with whom I would enjoy having a cold beverage at some point in time -- provided they put cash on the table to pay the tab first).
The problem with that, is that marketing people do not conduct their business using real data, rigorous logic, or planning activities. They use their spuriously created numbers and schemes as if they were etched in granite, and are seldom (if ever) held accountable for the disasters they create. The now famous acronym "GIGO" (garbage in, garbage out) of early software development is representative of what marketing brings to the table (other than inflated market valuations, bonuses, and greed driven risk taking by CEOs and Corporate Boards who have very little of their own "skin in the game"). That is the precise reason for "bubbles". Once the hype is gone or unmasked, the spurious valuations collapse and the bubble pops.