Baristas will be busier in the coming days: Daily-deals website LivingSocial sold 1.5 million $10 Starbucks gift certificates Wednesday. It's not just a testament to the allure of Starbucks; it's a sign that group-buying websites are alive and well despite Groupon's free-falling stock.
On the surface, it appears daily deals purveyor Groupon is more popular than ever. It ended 2011 with 33 million active customers in 47 countries, and it's growing fast. But look closer, and there are signs that "Groupon fatigue" is kicking in.
Running a restaurant has never been easy, but it's getting harder to succeed these days for eateries that shun the social couponing and new media games. A decade ago, all you needed was a strong concept, a healthy strategy and a few ads in the local paper, but the Internet has changed everything.
After Groupon's IPO release on Thursday and its bumpy first day of trading Friday, it's time for ordinary investors to think hard about whether we really want to take the plunge on the coupon company. DailyFinance offers a few expert opinions about whether this daily deal is a winner.
As Groupon prepares for its IPO, here's a gentle reminder to the company's original public investors: the bargain buyers. If you don't redeem those Daily Deals -- and many of us forget to after we buy them -- they're just money down the drain for you, and pure profit for the company.
It's fitting that Groupon -- the daily deals leader that at one time was valued as high as $20 billion -- is finally gearing up to go public at a discount. Its IPO will give it a market capitalization of less than $12 billion. The flash sale specialist is also selling fewer shares to the public, a move that will make it easier to pull off this deal in this iffy climate.
Did Groupon's deal Friday for a Manhattan helicopter tour spin into bad taste? The email offer to New Yorkers comes just 10 days after a helicopter from a different company plunged into the city's East River, killing two tourists.
Tens of thousands of group deals are purchased every day from sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, but between 18% and 22% aren't redeemed. All that spent-yet-unspent money is an opportunity for a secondary market, and a handful of websites are filling the gap, providing deal-holders a quick way to cash-out on offers they won't use.
A penny saved, they say, is a penny earned -- which explains the popularity of group-buying websites. But they also say that time is money, which is why you may be feeling like the daily slog through all those discount deals is becoming more trouble than it's worth. But there are ways to keep the bargains and take back your inbox.
Facebook dipped a big toe into the group-buying waters on Tuesday, launching a test of its Deals on Facebook service. But though it's coming late to the game, analysts and merchants say they won't be surprised if the social networking titan soon poses a viable threat to market leaders Groupon and LivingSocial.
Everyone loves to save money, and group-buying websites like Groupon and LivingSocial make it seem so easy. But they also make it easy -- and very tempting -- to buy more than you need, things that you don't, and coupons you'll never redeem. But you can tame your group-buying habit.
Groupon is planning an initial public offering that would value the three-year-old online coupon distribution site at as much as $15 billion -- more than double what Google reportedly bid on the company last year -- The New York Times reported.
People who run smaller group-buying sites say the aggregators are by far the best source of new customers and new traffic. And LivingSocial, while big and valued at $1 billion, is still a whole lot smaller than the big kahuna Groupon. So why would LivingSocial take this tack?
Already the global group-buying leader and growing much faster than its competitors, Groupon is getting a lot more funding. For what? For world domination, of course. . .and here's how Groupon is likely to put that new-found cash to work.
Groupon, the online social coupon site launched in 2008, is looking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in expansion-related funding after rejecting a bid from search giant Google worth as much as $6 billion, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the process.