BuyWithMe has discovered that acquisition as a growth strategy does not always work. The No. 3 daily deals site behind Groupon and Living Social has laid off the bulk of its staff in what is described as a “last ditch effort” to sell the company, according to the firm’s former marketing director Ian Boschen. READ MORE
LivingSocial, a well known daily deals site, may scrap any thoughts of an IPO in 2011 and instead raise $200 million . The funding round would include equity and debt with efforts led by JPMOrgan Chase. LivingSocial would invite current investors to contribute as well as bring in new ones. READ MORE
Groupon imitators are popping up in every facet of life, from Jewpon for Kosher deals to Grouptune for Christian music. Los Angeles-based startup BetterWorks is taking the group deal model and applying it to a new arena: employee perks. READ MORE
Google has acquired a Groupon clone, a German company called DailyDeal. The company, which was founded in 2009, offers deals in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Google has not commented on the acquisition, but DailyDeal announced the agreement on its website. READ MORE
While the daily deals and flash sales markets share a strong similarity, namely, by appealing to customers’ compulsiveness, their futures can not be more opposite — at least based on two pieces of news today. READ MORE
Revenues were up for Groupon in August, though the daily deals craze as a whole was looking a bit grim about the mouth. The company gained 2 percent market share this past month and revenue jumped 13 percent to $120.7 million according to TechCrunch. Groupon Getaways, the company’s travel offering, also saw a growth in revenue, from $5.7 million in July to $9.6 million in August. READ MORE
Google Offers, a daily deals program engineered by the search engine giant to compete with Groupon, launched in Portland, Oregon last April before expanding to New York City and the San Francisco area. After a successful beta launch in all the requisite tech markets, Google Offers announced that it will launch in five new cities: Austin, Boston, Denver, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. READ MORE
Groupon has fallen victim to the IPO blues. The stormy IPO market claimed several causalities in August, and now Groupon has canceled its roadshow — when it pitches itself to investors nationwide — originally planned for next week. READ MORE
Innovation Works, a Chinese start-up incubator, announced today that it has raised $180 million from a list of American investors that includes Sequoia Capital, executives from Google and Facebook, and Silicon Valley Bank. READ MORE
You know how you take a break from work to quickly check what’s happening on Facebook or Twitter and you end up wasting 20 minutes of your day? Multiply that several times a day and we’re talking about some serious productivity lost! But what if you could reply to someone’s post without actually going into the social network in the first place, thereby eliminating the temptation to hang out too long? READ MORE
