Over the past few days, there has been a heated debate about Quora, a year-old startup. Looking back at other startups that have successfully made the transition to Internet-scale companies, there are three elements to the magic formula for success. Read more »
Google, Facebook and others are investing in hyperlocal ads that deliver marketing pitches to users within small, well-defined areas. But before the concept can truly take hold in the mainstream markets, several challenges await businesses looking to bring their advertising strategies to the table. Read more »
Porn company Private Media plans to give away a lot of its X-rated content. The move is meant to offer alternatives to unlicensed video sites. So how does Private intend to make money? By running ads for major brands as part of a Groupon-like voucher scheme. Read more »
Apple and Google both made moves at the top, raising questions about the future of both companies. The FCC signed off on Comcast’s bid for NBC. And the daily deals business heated up this week with LivingSocial flexing its muscles while Google launched a Groupon clone. Read more »
So Google is launching Groupon-style discount program for small businesses known as Google Offers. But does Google have what it takes to build up that kind of service on its own? Probably not. Which is why the company should still think about buying a Groupon clone. Read more »
Groupon may be getting all the headlines lately, but competitor LivingSocial launched a gift-card promotion with Amazon today that shows the kind of marketing power the group-buying company now has at its disposal, as a result of the recent $175-million investment from the online retailing giant. Read more »
As expected, Groupon announced today that it has completed a gigantic financing of $950-million from a group of high-profile funds, including Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins. Now all it has to do is prove that it can carve out a long-term business amid escalating competition. Read more »
After being rebuffed by Groupon, Google is reportedly looking at acquiring another player in the group-buying space — and there are good reasons why it should do so. A marriage of local advertising and social shopping could fill a big hole in the web giant’s portfolio. Read more »
Fans of Groupon note that it has more than 100 writers, editors and fact-checkers on staff — more than a lot of medium-sized newspapers — and is continuing to hire and train writers, many of whom are (or were) journalists. But is that really something worth celebrating? Read more »
In Silicon Valley, history often repeats itself. Most often it’s the tale of a startup that captures the attention of millions and topples its bigger, incumbent competitors. Then it becomes hated monopoly, despised for the control it wields. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, this ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
On the surface, the fast-growing daily deal site Groupon and eBay have little in common, but, according to CapLinked CEO Eric Jackson, the economic factors contributing to Groupon’s growth would be doing the same for eBay, had eBay not made a long series of strategic blunders. Read more »
This week was dominated by the deal that didn’t happen. While the rumored $6 billion acquisition of Groupon by Google hasn’t been consummated, it seemed to spur action among local e-commerce rivals and prompted a lot of thought about the future of local social shopping. Read more »
According to multiple reports, Groupon has walked away from a rumored $6-billion acquisition offer from Google, and is choosing to go it alone, and possibly file for an initial public offering. The two-year-old company is said to have annual revenues of close to $2 billion. Read more »
According to multiple reports, Google is considering an acquisition of Groupon for as much as $6 billion. Why would the web giant want to pay so much for a two-year-old startup? Because social advertising — and especially local advertising — is the company’s future. Read more »
Groupon is growing faster than virtually any other tech-related company in history, including Google and Facebook, and is expected to close the year with revenue of more than $500 million. What then, are the lessons retailers and other companies can learn from the such incredible ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Check-ins have given consumers a glimpse of the power of location and the deals they unlock. But there’s another world awaiting as mobile users learn to appreciate the era of “persistent location,” in which a user’s location is passively used to deliver them relevant information Read more »
“Local” and “social” go together like bread and butter. Add “mobile” and you’ve a trio of hot technologies that’s attracting capital from investors and big companies alike. For consumers, there are obvious synergistic experiences: mobility is local by definition, as are many social activities like physical-world ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Marketing using location and social networking are like peanut butter and chocolate — they’re a perfect combination. Add mobile and you have a trio of hot technologies attracting capital from investors and big companies alike. Here are the revenue models to watch as these elements collide. Read more »
Originally intended to get shoppers out in full-force to start the holiday shopping season, Black Friday has become a holiday unto itself, where bargain hunters shake off their turkey hangovers to wake up before dawn and chase amazing deals. But as is the case with most ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Black Friday has become a holiday unto itself, where bargain hunters shake off their turkey hangovers to wake up before dawn and chase amazing deals. But as is the case with many activities these days, technology is rapidly changing the way people shop. Read more »
When it comes to consumer technologies, how big is big enough? When do they really start to gain momentum, and what happens when they do? These are questions of critical mass — the tipping point when user adoption starts producing the hockey-stick growth that fosters sustainable businesses. Read more »
Groupon, the social-buying phenomenon that has already raised more than $165 million in financing in the past year, is reportedly looking for another round that could give the company a market value as high as $3 billion, as it tries to continue its aggressive growth plan. Read more »
How do you compete with an 800-pound gorilla like Groupon? If you’re Tippr, you don’t. Instead, you arm websites with the weapons to do that themselves. The Seattle-based startup today launched a white-label platform that gives companies the tools to run their own group-buying campaigns. Read more »
Facebook is testing the addition of Groupon-style discount offers to its Facebook Places location feature, according to a report based on an email received by an anonymous merchant. Although unconfirmed, such a move — which would bring Facebook into direct competition with Groupon — makes sense. Read more »
In Silicon Valley, there’s an elite group of companies whose valuations defy gravity. These are companies with momentum, whether real or perceived: Zynga, Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. Add Groupon, RadiumOne, Tumblr, Cloudera and RightScale to this list. Plus, they are all in the money. Read more »
Don Rainey of Grotech Ventures, one of the financial backers behind the number two group-buying player LivingSocial, says he sees a future in which consumers looking for a night out can bid on offers of discounts from local merchants in a real-time, stock exchange-style marketplace. Read more »
Appcelerator, which makes the Titanium mobile development platform, is working with PayPal to enable a potential deluge of mobile commerce apps from merchants looking to connect with smartphone savvy customers. The new product, called Titanium+Commerce, will enable many of the hottest ideas in mobile shopping. Read more »
The rapid growth of Groupon has gotten the attention of newspaper chains, with Cox Media the latest to announce that it’s launching a similar social-shopping service called DealSwarm. But news publishers may be too late to this particular game, just as they were with Craigslist. Read more »
Local businesses now have awesome tools available to them to monitor, market to, communicate with, give discounts to and reward loyalty from customers. These services are all run separately, even though if they were integrated together they would all be more effective. Read more »
Location-based shopping services (LBS) have made many headlines recently, and studies have shown that users actually like receiving ads and offers well-targeted to their interests. Couple that with an influx of Tier 1 venture capital and the show-stopping Facebook Places, with which several startups have already joined forces, and it’s no wonder LBS is suddenly such a hot topic in the mobile sector. That doesn’t necessarily mean LBS shopping apps will be easy to implement. A number of challenges — privacy concerns, scaling issues and check-in integrity among them — provide a potential barrier to widespread adoption. This note examines both the drivers and inhibitors for making location-based shopping services a mainstream phenomenon, and includes focused profiles of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Loopt, Foursquare, BrightKite, Whrrl, Gowalla, Plancast, Groupon, AisleBuyer, Bizness Apps, Offeretti, ShopAlerts, Shopkick, Bakodo, Stickybits, Yelp!, Geodelic Sherpa, WHERE, MyTown, InCrowd, SCVNGR, Waze and Layar. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason — who’s created what’s now being called “the fastest growing company ever” out of the ashes of an unsuccessful collective giving platform — today at the DEMO Conference attributed part of his tech startup’s success to being located in Chicago. Read more »
Groupon says it expects to end the year with as many as 25 million subscribers and $400 million in sales. Chief operating officer Rob Solomon also says the company’s promotional campaign for The Gap was so successful it has been fielding calls from other national advertisers. Read more »
Social shopping is all the rage, with new money flowing into new startups every day. Is it a bubble? The answer is no: despite the outward appearance of being an overcrowded marketplace, it is a new era for e-commerce. Read more »
Flash sales and daily deals are so hot right now. Today Twitter took the wraps off @earlybird, a company-run account that will publish and promote offers from advertisers. Initial offers will be targeted at the U.S., but Twitter promises future location-specific and interest-specific deals. Read more »
Entrepreneurs are drilling down into ways to make local coupons more personalized and relevant. Juice in the City, which went live this week, is a Groupon for mothers. Meanwhile, Offermatic, which learns about its users by monitoring their spending, is set to launch Monday. Read more »
Groupon, the fast-growing collective buying site, said today that it’s setting up an outpost in Silicon Valley by buying the mobile app development shop Mob.ly. We snagged some time with Mob.ly CEO Mihir Shah this afternoon and he explained the background behind the deal. Read more »
Turns out collective buying isn’t the only path down which LivingSocial is following local coupon hotshot Groupon. Less than two weeks after Groupon closed a $135 million Series C round, LivingSocial has raised a $14 million Series C round led by new investor Lightspeed Venture Partners. Read more »
Collective buying site Groupon has taken $135 million from DST and Battery Ventures, valuing it at more than $1 billion. It has now raised more than $170 million, with previously projected revenue of $100 million for 2010. Read more »
Could a broad set of patents around collective buying be the ammo Tippr needs to chase Groupon? That’s what CEO Martin Tobias is betting, having bought up the intellectual property generated by bubble-era Mercata from its investor Paul Allen. Read more »
Where I’ve Been, a popular Facebook application that lets users chart past and future travel plans and discuss them with friends, has gotten an additional round of funding from the co-founders of Groupon, a group-buying service. Where I’ve Been says it has 9 million registered users. Read more »
