Bloomberg : LivingSocial Is Said to Get Funding Valuing It at $6 Billion

LivingSocial.com, the online-coupon provider that competes with Groupon Inc., lined up $400 million in funding that gives it a valuation of about $6 billion, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

The company has already sold $176 million of the total, Washington-based LivingSocial said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 

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Bloomberg : Groupon Accused in Lawsuit of Altering Merchant Contracts in Sent E-Mails

Groupon corresponds with its merchant-clients by e-mail and transmits its merchant agreements in the body of e-mailed messages, according to the complaint by BidMyCrib, a website that allows contractors to bid on residential construction projects. The company later goes into those e-mails and alters the content, according to the complaint.

Groupon changed at least one section of the merchant agreement with BidMyCrib by adding a new sentence regarding voucher expiration dates to the previously agreed-upon language, according to the complaint.

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Tippr Adds Google Offers to Growing List of Affiliate Partners for White-Label Daily Deal Platform

TIPPR™, the premier provider of group buying solutions, today announced a partnership with Google Offers that will leverage Google’s trusted brand and extensive reach to expand the distribution of TIPPR deals to new cities, beginning in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Google Offers service, which sends local, personalized deals of the day to subscribers email inboxes, launched in June and has quickly expanded to additional cities nationwide. With this partnership, Google Offers subscribers gain access to deals provided by TIPPR.com.

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Appolicious : Yipit’s personalized daily deal aggregator goes mobile

It’s called Yipit.com and the personalized deal aggregator has recently arrived for iPhone and iPod Touch in the form of Yipit Deals — Daily Deals, Sales and Coupons.

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Tippr Blog : Daily Deals Are Not Dead

Don’t let the media noise drown out the core appeal of local deals: that, for the first time, the Internet, social media, email and mobile now have a successful, measureable method by which to drive millions of people online to do something offline. To get out from in front of their computers and experience their local community.  Deal programs are the first product to truly make that magical marriage of advertising and consumption work.

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Boston Business Journal : BuyWithMe reportedly seeking VC to continue M&A spree

Boston- and NYC-based group buying service BuyWithMe, a runner-up competitor to the larger venture-backed competitors Groupon and LivingSocial, is on the hunt for more venture-capital cash, to continue a recent M&A shopping spree that gobbled up three smaller group buying companies in three months this year, according to a report.

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Gizmodo: Google Could Kill Groupon If They Don’t Screw Up

Google has put themselves in a position where their multitude of platforms, especially Gmail and Android, their search powers, and the way Offers is designed to benefit both merchants and consumers give them a major advantage over the likes of Groupon and Living Social. We're talking: Better payment terms for deal providers; Better returns on vouchers; And better distribution through ads and Google's already immense portfolio of products and services.

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Valpak Annual Consumer Savings Report Indicates 28 Percent Increase for Consumer Spending in Summer 2011

Twenty-eight percent of consumers plan to spend more this summer, an 11 percent increase since 2010 according to the annual summer survey* conducted by Valpak. The consumer spending report issued twice a year by one of the leading direct marketing companies in North America also indicates little change over last year in consumers' purchase intentions for the next six months, with one exception: consumers plan to spend more of their hard earned money on improving the interior of their homes. Responses around deal-seeking behaviors, such as coupon usage and private label purchases, however, continue to point toward post-recession consumers putting an emphasis on value.

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Tippr’s Two Cents on Groupon’s IPO

Simply put, Groupon is spending a lot more than it takes in. While their financials are not public, we can guess from LivingSocial’s massive media presence that their financials are similar.  According to Groupon’s financials and our own experience with SEO, display ads, and an affiliate network, the cost of acquiring new customers is INCREASING.   So, the obvious questions are: Is there a tipping point?  Can any company find a way to make money in the daily deal business?

We believe YES.

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Bloomberg: Groupon Files to Raise $750 Million in IPO After Coupon Site’s Sales Surge

As early as March, Groupon was in talks with bankers about an IPO that would value the company at as much as $25 billion, people familiar with the matter said at the time. Groupon is benefiting from demand for daily coupons, which provide discounts at local businesses like restaurants and nail salons.

“You need to have a war chest,” said Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst with Caris & Co. in San Francisco. “You need to have that access to capital to maintain that level of growth.”

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