It's Twitter vs. Facebook in the Battle of the Daily Deals

Offering a "deal of the day" is a very, very long-standing convention to drive consumer interest and a call to action to visit one's store and/or site. It's a blunt instrument to drive traffic shaped by the idea that once a consumer is engaged, one could showcase a broader offering and drive additional sales beyond just the heavily discounted item. Deals work to generate revenue and liquidate product in the short term. Deal of the day offers have exploded with the help of new models (e.g., LivingSocial, One Kings Lane, and Google offers) and the distribution power of social networks.

In February, I wrote a piece entitled "Facebook: The Case for Commerce Gets Stronger," which made the case that Facebook has become a meaningful source of referral traffic for e-commerce, as evidenced by Amazon securing 7.7 percent of its traffic in Q4 2010 from Facebook. A meaningful percent of that Facebook referral traffic was realized from click-throughs on daily deals posted on the fan page, and pushed to the stream. Consumers were "liking" brands to get access to deals.

At the same time, Twitter was growing as a consumer favorite for accessing deals. From #Deals to @googleoffers, @Amazondeals.com, and @TargetDailyDeals, consumers are following in big numbers...