Facebook introduced a new feature to its popular social networking site yesterday that will allow consumers to purchase coupons for public events.

The coupon concept has been catching on with internet giants like Google, which started marketing daily deals through a service called "Offers" last week in Portland, Oregon. In addition, Amazon put $175 million into a privately run social commerce company called LivingSocial last December. 

"Although the market has seen huge growth and there are big players already there, it's not something that's locked down," said Ray Valdes, an Internet analyst at research firm Gartner. "I expect to see churn among the vendors as they try one thing and it works for awhile and other vendors find new ways of better meeting user's needs." 

Now, Facebook is joining the mix by offering Facebook Deals, which are coupons that consumers can purchase directly off of Facebook for social events such as concerts and wine tasting. The coupons are geared toward group activities since Facebook is a social networking company that encourages connections. 

"It's not about taking someone else's business model and force-fitting it into Facebook," said Emily White, director of local products at Facebook. "Ultimately we're providing what we hope is a really great user experience by looking at what people come to Facebook to do, and that's interact with friends."  

Facebook is offering Facebook Deals to Austin, San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas and Atlanta at first, and plans to spread the Deals to other U.S. cities later in the year. For each coupon sold, Facebook will receive a cut of the transaction, but the social networking giant has not mentioned exactly how much that cut is. 

Analysts expect Facebook's coupon deal to be particularly successful since it is conveniently placed right on Facebook, where over 500 million users are active.