Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley told the Wall Street Journal in an interview that his company is passing on daily coupons from these marketing partners to Foursquare users while taking a cut of the revenue. “We are trying to see if our targeting works and how users will react,” Crowley told the Journal.
LivingSocial is calling their expansion “parent-approved”. The daily deal company is expanding into U.S. and European cities. However, it does sound a little like a commercial, but as parent who knows, saving money this summer with kids is heaven sent. Whatever happened to just going to the park for picnic and swim?
“It’s how daily deal sites should have always been – a place where like-minded consumers could band together to influence local businesses.” CEO and Founder Mike Davis pointed out, “I feel like this is the natural evolution of the daily deal industry where local deals intersect with social networking. Ringleadr makes users the true influencers, not the websites that publish pre-determined deals.”
From the looks of it, the new social shopping company is truly social. Quopons and merchants create unbeatable deals that consumers really want. “We only send out one email per day featuring one deal to our subscribers,” says Stan Eyler, CEO of Quopons. “They can buy the deal but in order for the deal to reach the ‘tipping point’ and ‘activate,’ a minimum number must buy the deal or it is ‘No Deal,’ which encourages buyers to contact friends about the deal through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.”
Microsoft has just launched Bing Deals, a search engine that will allow users to search for daily deals from across 200,000 offerings across 14,000 cities and towns in US. Instead of launching a daily deals site of its own, or trying to acquire one – like Google did, Microsoft approach with Bing Deals is to aggregate daily deals on offer at daily deal sites such as Groupon, Living Social and scores of other competitors.
LivingSocial made a killing in January by offering $20 Amazon gift card for $10. The offer went out to millions of LivingSocial members across 89 markets and resulted in sale of 1.4 million vouchers, an insane amount of media coverage and a huge spike in traffic.
LivingSocial is getting bigger than the pile of frosting on its cupcake ad. Today the daily deal site has announced that it will open in nine U.S. markets including Scottsdale, AZ; Ann Arbor, MI; Jackson, MS; San Diego – North County, CA;Boston – North Shore, MA; Gainesville, FL; Madison, WI; Plano, TX and Snohomish County, WA. Â The expansion follows a $175 million investment from Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and an $8 million investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners, which the company announced in a press release on December 2, 2010.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., LivingSocial now reaches 170 markets in 10 countries, with 16 million subscribers worldwide. This puts the company just behind competitor Groupon, whose reach extends to 300 markets in 35 countries, with 24 million subscribers, according to Groupon’s website. LivingSocial has also increased its offerings with the acquisition of Urban Escapes, a social adventure company that plans weekend mini-breaks for urban dwellers.
“Whether your New Year’s Resolution is to save money, get fit, travel more or discover new experiences and activities in your area, LivingSocial can help you do it all by offering incredible savings on the most popular local restaurants, salons, fitness centers, specialty shops, outdoor activities and more,” said Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO and co-founder of LivingSocial in a statement. “Smart shoppers in these nine new markets can now stick to their New Year’s goals by cutting costs on the things they love to do.”
LivingSocials’ 12 Days of Giving event, allows users to shop for great deals in their communities and at the same time give back by taking a percentage of what you spend and support local schools in your community and around the world.
With most speculating that Groupon will soon sell to Google, Amazon has invested $175 million in competing daily deal site LivingSocial. Local markets and internet savvy shoppers only stand to benefit.
LivingSocial has just released some interesting stats detailing the impact that its daily deals have had on shoppers and businesses in its hometown of Washington, D.C. From saving shoppers millions of dollars to growing small businesses, LivingSocial’s hometown successes bode well for the company and the daily deals industry as a whole.
