The Web has been a great source of consumer deals for well over a decade. And on the email front, the regular email blasts of “special offers” and discounts from a staggeringly broad range of vendors are nothing new.
But now a new crop of Web startups have merged the Web discount and email blast idea into a new kind of ecommerce juggernaut. As Ecommerce Guide reports, sites like Groupon and LivingSocial are attracting millions of subscribers and the attention of some notable tech giants.
Groupon, LivingSocial? Who are these guys? That might be the question a lot of folks are asking about the fast-growing group of startups offering consumers daily email deals on popular local goods and services such as restaurants and spa treatments.
Since it launched two years ago, Chicago-based Groupon has quickly become the poster child for the category, thanks to a rapid rise in customers and a widely-reported negotiation with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) that is said to have offered anywhere from $4 to $6 billion to buy the company.