'Net Features : living social

Dealie Award Winners at LivingSocial

Pete Prestipino — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:14:00 GMT

Daily deal network Living Social took a look back at its most popular deals and the top travel destinations this week, and has announced its 2011 Dealie Award Winners.

The top three major market offers of 2011 for the daily deal site were a promotion for the New England Acquarium (20,000 vouchers), Mr Wash Car Wash (16,000 vouchers) and Blue Ribbon BBQ (15,000 vouchers). Living Social also game kudos to the top three mid-market and small market advertisers/merchants which sold in the range of 3,000 to 9,000 vouchers on average.

LivingSocial offers national deals as well and seemed to do pretty well with that through 2011. Over 1 million subscribers of Living Social acted on vouchers for both Fandango and Whole Foods in 2011.

“Today we’re honoring just a handful of the merchants that made that growth possible. We look forward to continuing to grow our merchant relationships to offer our members even more unique, interesting and affordable experiences in 2012,” said Jake Maas, Senior Vice President, Consumer Businesses, LivingSocial.

Living Social is certainly on the move, expanding from 3 to 25 countries and from 150 to 627 markets globally. The daily deal site sold more than 600,000 room nights through its Escapes services as well.

Daily Deal Aggregation at Offers.com - Saturation?

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:15:00 GMT

Last week Offers.com announced the debut of its Local City Deals at the Daily Deals Summit in New York City. Does the Web need an aggregation service for daily deals? Offers.com apparently believes so, but consumers will most definitely have the last word on whether its actually wanted.

Offers from local daily deal sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, CrowdSavings, Entertainment.com, Restaurant.com and others will be aggregated and provided to consumers through one website (and one email) to access daily deals from over 75 U.S. cities.

"Everyone loves having a bunch of daily deals to choose from each day, but who has time to sort through multiple emails each morning to find the best deals in their area? Local City Deals at Offers.com gives you the best of both worlds – all of the local deals for your city, plus the top three offers hand-selected by our editors. You can find all of that on our site, or you can sign up for your Local City Deals email to get one email every morning," said Steve Schaffer, founder and CEO of Offers.com.

Game On, Groupon. LivingSocial Makes a Splash

Mike Phillips — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 14:13:00 GMT

UPDATE: Looks like Google is about to get in on the game, too. This fact sheet uncovers Google Offers. That didn't take long, after Groupon famously rebuffed Google's $6 billion buyout offer.

In one swift motion, LivingSocial emerged this week as Groupon’s most serious competitor. On Wednesday morning, January 19, LivingSocial offered a $20 Amazon.com gift card for $10. And by that same evening, 1,000,000 had been sold – at a rate of 85 per second. That’s faster than any of Groupon’s deals including The Gap, which sold about 10 per second.

Of course, Amazon invested $175 million in LivingSocial in December 2010. It makes sense, then, that LivingSocial’s coming out party was hosted by Amazon. It’s particularly interesting that the first big deal from the newcomer is an online deal. While LivingSocial also offers localized, brick-and-mortar deals, the Amazon coupon has done enough to claim some online-only mindshare with consumers and advertisers. Groupon, on the other hand, has branded itself as a local deal site.

LivingSocial might have delivered a very public uppercut to Groupon but they are hardly the only ones looking for a piece of the group-sourced pie. Yelp.com recently started offering daily deals, YouSwoop and Woot.com have been around a while, Restaurant.com is in the mix, Tippr.com is new but gaining momentum and Facebook has been very quiet about their daily deal offerings … for now.

Your move, Groupon.