Mallicious: Facebook Shopping with the Wrong Name at the Wrong Time

Mallicious may be in the wrong place at the wrong time with an unfortunate name: a social shopping deals site with a Facebook app with a name that looks like “malicious.”

Mallicious looks like it could be a much more useful app than Facebook's tragic Beacon (see Profy coverage here, here, and here). Instead of sharing what people are BUYING, Mallicious is a deal aggregator. If you are familiar with any of the tons of sites that consolidate online coupons, sales, and deals, Mallicious does this with a much slicker-looking interface, as well as giving users the ability to add their own deals that they find, and comment on the deals already posted. Add the Mallicious Facebook app and you can share deals you find with your friends, which would be awesome for me during shopping season, when I do most of my shopping online and often forget to check for coupons for the sites I'm shopping.

Of course, anything that brings Beacon to mind right now is going to have problems, as the Facebook community has revolted, and at the moment, probably isn't feeling any too friendly toward any app with “social shopping” as an idea. And I can't help but giggle every time I write “Mallicious Facebook app” because I mentally keep adding “Well, isn't that Beacon?” I should add that they also have a Google Gadget as well, but with Facebook the game everyone seems to be playing, it seemed a bit of an afterthought. I haven't added a Google Gadget in a while, whereas I've had friends invite me to add everything from zombies to trivia games to my Facebook.

I think Mallicious could end up as a helpful app for Facebook users, leveraging the tag line of “social shopping mall” a bit more. All they need to do is sell their concept to Facebook as a better way to make money than Beacon. And change their name to something less, well, malicious.