Facebook is finding experiences for friends on Facebook, as it seeks to integrate local commerce into the social network.

I sat down with Emily White, senior director of local at Facebook, today at the Social Loco conference to talk about Facebook’s new Deals service, now testing in five cities.

White described Facebook’s thinking on Deals coming from its focus on social interaction between friends. Facebook Deals gives people a way to hang out in real life and is designed to work with “normal human behavior.” The company is focusing on deals that are experiences people can do together and “create memories”–a wine tasting or a photography class, rather than say, discounted tax preparation. And for Facebook’s business, it also brings e-commerce into Facebook for merchants.

“People come to Facebook to interact with friends,” she said. “They want to have social experiences with friends… For us it’s about people finding an activity that their friends are interested in–because it’s a friend’s birthday or it’s a long weekend coming up. It’s your husband or brother or friend asking, ‘Do you want to do this with me?’”

White emphasized the benefits of Facebook Deals for consumers are not just the deals themselves, but everything around them–Facebook’s social graph, photos, comments, and events, that all can be used in connection with the Deal and people’s interaction with it. Also, in my opinion, that’s Facebook’s differentiator from other services like Groupon.

The highest conversion rates on Facebook Deals are not surprisingly when friends recommend them, White said.

But the most interesting thing to me is how Facebook is aggregating deals from partners for its deals service. Partners include flash sale company Gilt Groupe’s local deals service, Gilt City; local deals service Home Run; OpenTable, which focuses on restaurants; PopSugar City, which focuses on women; and Zozi, which focuses on outdoor activities. Facebook seems to be betting that its product can take on others like Groupon and LivingSocial (and eventually Google) by pulling the best of deals across the web.

Facebook also is generating its own deals with its own sales force–at this point it’s not automated or self serve–but Facebook does not appear to be focusing on this. While White did not say what the balance is between its own deals sourced via its own sales force and deals it aggregates from partners, White emphasized the importance of its partners. That does not mean Facebook will not eventually hire a big local sales force, but that doesn’t appear to be the current focus.

“It’s similar to how we approach our business in general,” White said. “We have some amazing partners who do great jobs sourcing deals… To a large extent, the deals are through our partners–all 11 of them.”

Facebook is keeping to its model of staying relatively small on headcount and leveraging partners, White says. Mark Zuckerberg likes to mention that Facebook has the lowest ratio of engineers-to-users of virtually any technology company.

“People think of Facebook as big, but we’re pretty small–just over 2,000 people,” White says. “As in any area, most of our growth is from partnerships. There’s so much more that Facebook is able to do because we’re leveraging the Facebook platform.”

White sees most people using the deals not through the typical daily email as they do with Groupon (though Facebook does send these emails) but through social means like friends sharing deals on Facebook.

Merchants who are participating in Facebook Deals get the benefit of the deals being integrated with their Facebook Page (which is again something that Groupon and others can’t do). That enables consumers to see their friends comments on the business, who has checked-in there, and other information. It also gives merchants a chance to get a stronger connection with consumers.

“Let’s create something that really takes advantage of normal human behavior, and at the same time is really good for businesses,” White said.

Facebook is open to doing national brands in its deals service, as long as it ties into its focus on experiences that friends can do together, she said. These deals in the future do not have to specifically be local. (Groupon did a massive offer with the Gap last year.)

“It doesn’t really matter,” White said. “As long as the experience we think is social and creates great memories. It can be national or local.”

White said that contrary to some of what’s been written online, Facebook Deals is not designed specifically as a way to get people to use Facebook Credits, Facebook’s virtual currency system.

“We’re really going for ease of use,” White said. “You’re able to discover a deal in your News Feed rather than go through 10 new daily deal emails. We’re adding value or actually your friends are adding value. Credits are the same way. It’s not about pushing Credits.”

Facebook Deals is not directly connected to Facebook’s check-in offers, another service which Facebook has already rolled out. That service enables people to check-in to Facebook on a mobile device and see what local deals are nearby. Read more at blogs.forbes.com