Comments on: Facebook Is Not Ready to Take on Groupon

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:46:17 +0000

Excellent points and very well explained.

By: Bill Gurley

Bill Gurley — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:35:42 +0000

I, for one, think the incumbents can easily do it from scratch. Consider this, nearly all of the clones I have seen (be they vertical, or regional, or demographic base), have decent revenue traction. In its current form, this is not a complex business, and it doesn’t require much technology at all. You only need scale relative to your target audience. So if a vertical players has access to customers and businesses in their vertical, they can easily jump in. This puts players like Yelp, Open Table, and yes Google, one step away from playing this in this business. Plus, Google has a huge salesforce and near infinite resources, so don’t expect that to be a constraint here.

GroupOn could easily change the game and either incorporate features that build more of a network effect, or incorporate more technology to raise the expectation of the user.

By: jr

jr — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:32:22 +0000

How will this affect the daily deal aggregator sites that are currently operating?

By: Nora Shekmer

Nora Shekmer — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 07:18:36 +0000

I think Facebook is going to be ready enough to challenge Groupon. It is going to take some time for them to establish a name for themselves in the daily deal market, though.

A great site to use to find these types of deals in your area is http://www.dailydealpool.com. They’ll send you a daily email with the best sales and deals, ensuring you won’t miss a chance to save, and possibly help out someone in need as well.

By: Shane

Shane — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 04:04:59 +0000

I’m cool with more competition. Because the more that show up, the more likely it will be that I get one of them to offer a local deal in my little community. When I first heard of Groupon I was stocked! But when I found that they offered no deals in my area, I thought I was missing the boat.

But after doing a little research, I found http://steals4all.com which provides a list of daily NATIONAL Goupon deals that I can purchase regardless of where I live. So now I and anyone else in a remote area can take advantage of these huge discounts.

If Facebook brings local deals that are in my area and if they offer national deals as well. That would be awesome!