Posts Tagged ‘Groupon’

Facebook, the social networking giant, already announced in November of last year the launch of Facebook Deals, which is the service’s answer to Groupon’s deal search. But does Facebook’s attempt at the couponing market really stand a chance against the already powerful Groupon? We think it does.
Facebook has a natural advantage to Groupon simply because just about everybody uses Facebook. Heck, even grandparents have caught on to social media. Facebook does an awful good job at putting everything in one place: photos, videos, messages, chat, and now local deals. People nowadays are looking for efficiency, and having everything that you need the internet for right on one website is quite attractive to consumers, as numbers have shown. Read the rest of this entry »

Groupon has allegedly raised its profit over 2200 percent within just one year, according to media reports. No surprise that other companies want to get a share of the pie: Qype has taken over cooledeals and started QypeDeals.com, Payback takes former cooledeals CEO under its wing to expand its own couponing market. And of course, all three of them are dying to call themselves the market leader.
Now one at a time: The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports based on an internal email sent to employees in January from Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason claiming there has been enormous growth in profit: from 33 million dollars in 2009 to 760 million at the end of 2010. According to the WSJ, Mason has not only made it his priority to remain the market leader for online deals in 2011, but also has the goal of becoming one of the leading tech-brands out there. This was not confirmed by Mason or a Groupon spokesman. Exact numbers aren’t really that important: it’s the incredible growth that’s important. Read the rest of this entry »

From the 23rd to the 25th of January, not only the grandees of the market showed up to the DLD (Digital Life Design) conference, sponsored by Burda publishing. Start-ups as well as investors also paid a visit in order to discuss their future plans and visions. The owners of the internet services are optimistic and agree: offline is out, online is becoming more and more mobile, and the social interactions will influence every aspect.

Three days filled to the rim with dissertations, discussions, and interviews. A lot was said, but we would like to provide a small summary of what we believe to be the most important points about the development of internet services, location based services (LBS), as well as social media: Read the rest of this entry »

The deal portal Groupon will be launching soon in India, Israel, and South Afrika. The company acquired the leading online coupon portals in the countries: SoSasta, Grouper, and Twangoo. Groupon announced the launch, each under its own brand, to be within the next few months. There is also speculation about a Chinese expansion and a step into the stock exchange. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh goodness…Google’s deal with Groupon was pretty much as good as signed and sealed according to media reports (we report), but now it seems as if the deal has fallen through. US media reports reported this weekend that the negotiations were indefinitely interrupted, unfortunately without success. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of hot air or is it the truth? For quite a few weeks now, there have been rumors that Groupon is being taken over by Google. And now, according to media reports on December 1st, Google offered the US market leader for online-couponing 5.3 billion dollars. With this kind of a deal, the search engine giant may become the leading provider for online and mobile deals. Read the rest of this entry »

We now have sufficient knowledge to know that the online-coupons business is very fertile, especially since the providers of coupon service are cropping their services to even more local levels. Exactly how fertile the couponing industry can be on the local level is displayed by the mother of all promotion hunters, Groupon: the service is now sponsoring users who are getting a baby. Read the rest of this entry »

Check-ins were once the hit when it came to location-based services. But we all know how it works out for hits: even they wear out. Foursquare is now trying to make a comeback with the 2.0 version of their app. They’re bringing a few new ideas in and a lot of disappointments. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the club: now the rating community Yelp is offering a “deal of the day”. The start-up is just in San Diego. Next in line are New York and San Francisco. Read the rest of this entry »