Google has launched a new stand-alone iPhone app for its Offers daily deals service, the company announced today in a blog post.
While Google Offers may not have caught on as big as Groupon or LivingSocial, the service continues to …
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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, …
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Groupon today launched a unique deal: You can have a Groupon employee come and tuck you into bed. As far as strange deals go, this one even beats out the deal offered by Groupon Philippines for 76% off circumcisions. (Disclosure: …
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Have you had the feeling the quality of Groupon deals is going down? If so, you’re right. A report released this morning by Giorgos Zervas, a postdoctoral fellow of computer science at Yale University, shows that the average rating of …
In Andrew Mason's recent letter to shareholders and in a press release touting 1.5 million Groupon Now deals sold, Groupon has been highlighting the product as an example of innovation and a potential positive for the beleaguered company.
After an accounting restatement, a shuffling of its board of directors and Groupon's stock falling to below 50 percent of its initial public offering price (and 66 percent off the high it reached on its first day of trading), Groupon CEO Andrew Mason wrote a letter to shareholders yesterday to try to swing the momentum back in the company's favor.
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.
After a rocky showing in its first earnings report, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason revealed his grand ambitions for the company in a letter to stockholders today. It’s not just about daily deals anymore: Mason wants Groupon to become the “operating …
In the midst of all the turmoil of Groupon, which is now trading at a market cap below $8 billion and broke below the $12 mark in trading today, the company's hometown newspaper had a sitdown with Groupon chairman Eric Lefkofsky. As a former journalist who once aspired to work at the Tribune, I'm embarrassed for them.
Craigslist may be on the smartphone already, but Fribi wants to kick the classified-ads space up a notch using the power of Facebook, coupons, and the cameras on our mobile-devices.
“Fribi is like a more personal twist to Craigslist, making …
I've spent much of the last year talking about how the sites small businesses rely on to advertise and promote themselves -- think Yelp and Groupon -- are failing them. In fact, helping small businesses at the local level is extremely challenging for technology companies, for the following reasons:
Groupon’s business stateside has been embroiled in an accounting scandal that cut the stock price in half. But its international operations are responsible for two-thirds of the company’s revenue. Yesterday the company announced that Marc Samwer, who along with his …
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With all of the doom and gloom surrounding Groupon, which reached yet another all-time low in trading today, I thought it would be useful to write up my best practices for buying Groupons and other daily deals.
Yes, despite being …
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This is the Groupon Promise, prominently plastered all over the Groupon site:
If the experience using your Groupon ever lets you down, we’ll make it right or return your purchase. Simple as that.
But when I put it to the …
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Groupon faced a deluge of bad press and unfavorable comparisons this week following its accounting restatement on March 30. This morning, I searched for Groupon and got this on Google News:
Notice that Google News algorithms put the Enron logo
…
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We’ve heard quite a few opinions about who’s to blame for Groupon’s IPO fiasco ever since the company announced a restatement of its earnings last Friday and indicated that it had material weakness in its internal controls. Andrew Ross Sorkin …
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Chicago-based investment research firm Morningstar can’t make the numbers in Groupon’s restatement add up. In a research note it sent to clients, who are institutional investors, it wrote:
While several of the financial revisions seem inconsistent, we were surprised by …
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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 …
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Groupon was forced to restate fourth quarter earnings, sending its stock down 6% in after-hours trading. This surprised me as much as my $2 investment in the Mega Millions jackpot not paying off.
The reasons for Groupon’s restatement were higher …
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 …
