UPDATED 13:44 EDT / JULY 28 2011

Is Groupon a Copycat? The Daily Deals Cat Fight over Creativity

Two of the biggest names in daily deals, Groupon and LivingSocial, are labeled as the fastest growing companies in the market. Groupon recently filed for an IPO and LivingSocial is following suit, soon to go public for its multi-billion-dollar IPO. But LivingSocial CEO Tim O’Shaugnessy says Groupon is copycatting its creativity.  And what makes Tim to think so? Well, Groupon has launched a series of similar products in the line of LivingSocial.

After LivingSocial introduced LivingSocial Instant, Groupon introduced their service Groupon Now.  When LivingSocial launched LivingSocial Escapes, Groupon followed with Getaways.

Currently Groupon is the leader in the deals market, with an estimated 650% rise in popularity in the past year. This figure was recently released by Gerson Lehrman Group’s infographic survey report.  Both Groupon and LivingSocial control about 90 percent of the total traffic in the daily deals market, and Groupon controls about 15.6 million visits among 500+ daily deal sites in America alone.

As far as Groupon goes, they’re slated for further expansion.  They’ve acquired Zappedy Inc., a startup e-commerce technology company, for $10.3 million in stock as per its filling with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  Zappedy provides software solution to bricks-and-mortar retailers.  The deal, which happened to be closed by July 15, is the latest in a series of acquisitions by Groupon this year alone.  Groupon also acquired Seattle based Pelago Inc. for $17.1 million in stock back in April, and Malaysia-based online discount service company GroupsMore became part of the Groupon family last January.

“We’re not constrained from making acquisitions during our quiet period. We’ve got a business to run. We’re out acquiring,” said Brad Williams, an internal spokesman for Groupon.

LivingSocial, on the other hand funded, $29.4 million in total stock for the acquisition of GoNabit, the daily-deal websites in the Middle East, and Ensogo, the deal websites with operation in Thailand and Philippines.

Groupon recently filed paperwork with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an IPO in June to raise at least $750 million. But its IPO could get delayed till September as federal regulators have some concerns on its self-selected financial metrics, such as measuring its revenue by providing gross profits financial metrics. The SEC will take at least two to three months to review Groupon’s IPO filling process.

IPOs are again making headlines. Groupon is the latest in bringing IPO to raise funds. Zillow, the online real-estate and home-valuation firm, recently offered its initial public stock offering at $20 per share.  IZEA Holdings, Inc., this week announced the completion of a merger transaction and the commencement of electronic stock trading under the symbol “IZEA” on the OTC Bulletin Board.  LinkedIn, Kayak, Zynga and Pandora show their interest to go public and Facebook is expected to follow the same suit.

One of the biggest winners in the tech industry’s IPO race is Fusion-io. With the flash memory technology boost, Fusion-io hopes to reach the billion-dollar mark, as it offered its IPO opening last month.  Fusion-io increases its selling share to $15 from $13 to give the company a valuation of around $1.17 billion. Shooger, the deal company for mobile community for local market, has secured $5 million of funding from Hudson Capital Group.

Most of the high profile IPOs have been successful so far, making way for others to follow. With interest growing trend for companies to go public, it would be quite interesting to see whether they are able to maintain their performance while rising into fame.

But will Groupon remain the market leader of the deals market? Groupon and LivingSocial both developed a mobile community for local deals and the latest to copycat the business is Shooger. Most of the restaurateurs and business venues have shown signs of market saturation when it comes to dealing with Groupon clones.  So for people to figure out who is copying whom, more young daily market space will be sifted alongside the competition.


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