LivingSocial, the international daily deals company, is alerting 50 million of its members to hack that left names, emails, birthdays, and hashed passwords exposed.
Living Social chief technology officer and co-founder Aaron Batalion is leaving the company. LivingSocial says it has not hired a replacement as of yet.
Think the group-coupon craze is nearing the end of its life cycle? Tell that to LivingSocial's investors.
LivingSocial, once the promising number two deals company behind Groupon, confirmed today that it has laid off 400 workers, or around 10 percent of its global workforce.
Guest Post Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of Groupon's IPO. And it's been a bad year. Here's what lies ahead in the deals landscape.
Guest Post
Daily deals site LivingSocial is taking on online shopping. Although many will compare it to Groupon Goods, it’s a very different product targeted at a different audience. (Disclosure: I have puts and several wagers against Groupon.)
Groupon Goods has been …
Guest Post
Discount hotel app HotelTonight announced $23 million in funding yesterday. It’s the kind of deal company I can get behind. (Disclosure: HotelTonight provided me a $100 credit to try the service.)
HotelTonight offers deals to last-minute travelers through iPad, iPhone, …
Guest Post
In its latest experiment in local commerce, LivingSocial is getting hands on with a new events space in downtown DC. Called 918 F, the space hosts a variety of events including cooking classes, zumba sessions, pop-up restaurants, and painting classes …
Groupon is changing its payment terms with merchants, according to several sources familiar with Groupon's business and contracts. The company has traditionally used two different payment models. In the United States and Canada, merchants have been paid in three installments.
Local advertising startup Signpost grew its business a little bit Tuesday with a $3.75 million investment and a new employee. Christopher DePatria, former head of sales at AOL Patch, joined the team as the vice president of revenue.
Signpost tackles …
Guest Post
People frequently ask me about how LivingSocial and Google Offers are different from Groupon.
In many ways, they are the same. Any model that gives businesses cash early on in exchange for a promise of service to be delivered later …
In two big twists, LivingSocial said so long to its “Instant” deals product and its co-founder on the same day.
The number-two deals service aborted its location-based Instant deals product and replaced it with a food takeout and delivery offering …
I’ve been testing out the Kindle Fire tablet for the last several weeks. At $199, it’s a tremendous value. It’s no iPad — I just upgraded to the new iPad as well — but it provides a solid base-level tablet …
Guest Post
I’ve long suspected that Groupon has a whale problem — that a lot of its revenue comes from a small number of customers. New research from ForeSee indicates that this may be the case.
A lot of businesses have whales. …
Yelp’s advertiser agreement combines some of the worst elements of Yellow Pages, Aol and cell phone agreements. As with many such agreements, it’s very lopsided in Yelp’s favor. (See my analysis of the similarly lopsided Groupon merchant agreement.)
Yelp charges …
Groupon reported its first quarterly earnings as a public company this week and blew away its numbers — in the sense that it stopped reporting key numbers investors need to assess the health of its business.
Based on generally accepted …
Amazon spent $175 million for a 31 percent stake in number two daily deals site LivingSocial, and in so doing bought us all the best look yet at the privately-held Groupon competitor’s financials.
Buried in Amazon’s annual 10-K filing, made …
Watch your backs Groupon and LivingSocial. A new report suggests daily deals sites are loosing steam quickly, with 798 daily deal sites worldwide shutting down in the second half of 2011.
Even since before Groupon went public in November, analysts …
Guest Post
From delayed IPOs to buyouts and layoffs, 2011 proved to be a volatile year for daily deals companies. In the past 12 months, the industry was defined and legitimized, but had just as many mistakes as successes.
The biggest daily …
Daily deals site LivingSocial has closed a monster $176 million round of financing, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission today. VentureBeat has learned that the $176 million is the first tranche of $400 million the company …
