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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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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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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Group Buy Superbowl Ads : Groupon.com & Living Social

Daily Deal Media : LivingSocial CEO: We’re Set to Pass Groupon in 2011

The game is heating up big time and the last couple of months have shown us that things can change quickly. We have to wonder if Groupon can maintain their position and for how long. Can LivingSocial indeed overtake them to claim the top position? They have a ways to go but it does look like a possibility. Our thoughts on Groupon? In the immortal words of Shakespeare, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”.

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The Australian : Yahoo7 buys daily deal site Spreets for $40m

The Yahoo7 transaction means that most of the country's biggest media companies have now backed deal-a-day websites, with global giant Groupon expected to ramp its local presence in the coming weeks.

Nine Entertainment launched Cudo in September; News Limited and Ten Network Holdings have backed Our Deal; Telstra has Yellow Pages Offers; and Fairfax promotes Spreets on its newspaper websites.

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PC Magazine : LivingSocial's Final Tally: 1.4M Amazon Vouchers Sold

The official tally for the biggest online coupon deal on record, LivingSocial's $20 Amazon voucher for $10 from yesterday, is jawdropping: 1,378,938 vouchers sold.

That's equivalent to 80 vouchers per second, 100,000 per hour, and $13 million in revenue.

It also beats Groupon's tremendous Gap offer last year, which sold 440,000 units and generated $11 million in revenue.

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CBS News : CBS Sunday Morning: Groupon, LivingSocial Provide 21st Century Coupons

LivingSocial and Koofers Team Up to Introduce 'Campus Deals'

Leading social shopping site LivingSocial, and Koofers, the social learning company that helps college students study smarter, unveiled the first milestone of their partnership to bring Campus Deals to ten universities across the nation.

The new program gives participating college students deeply discounted offers on area restaurants, shops, activities and services. Students at Virginia Tech, University of Maryland, Cal Berkeley, Penn State, Ohio State, University of Nebraska, University of Washington, Ball State University, University of Central Florida and Texas A&M will be the first adopters.

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Four Group Buy Sites Launch for UT Austin

Campus Daily Deals was launched in March 2010 by Campus Direct Media the publishers of the highly popular UT area edition of the Student Discount Handbook.University of Texas at Austin students and faculty love to get their Groupon!, LivingSocial, Morgan's Deals, and about a dozen other Austin area group buy deals. In fact, group buy industry leader Groupon's current user demographics show that 12% of their users are college students.

In addition to all the local and national group buy options in Austin, UT students, faculty, staff and area residents now have four new sources for group buy deals tailored to them:

Campus Daily Deals: Launched by Campus Direct Media the publishers of the highly popular UT area edition of the Student Discount Handbook.

The Buys of Texas: Daily Deal site launched by the University of Texas through its student media department.

College Mint: Recently launched Austin based college group buy site.

Big Deal on Campus: National college group buy site opening in the Austin market.

While four new media startups in the same niche in the same market seems like a lot, there are even more college group buy sites on the way to UT and campuses across the country.

As the group buy industry has started to move toward targeting geographic and demographic niches, the popularity of group buying amongst the campus crowd has fueled the launch of over 15 startups nationwide in the College Group Buy Space.