Deal-of-a-Day site Living Social's huge day on Wednesday (Jan. 19, 2011) ended with a 50 percent off Amazon.com gift card deal expiring with 1,301,296 sold. It's unclear if all of those will stand as the deal "fine print" said one per customer, and various Tweets and more indicated various attempts to "game" the system.
The deal was for a $20 Amazon.com gift card for $10. The deal went viral, and easily topped the 2010 deal between Living Social's big rival, Groupon, and The Gap, which ended up with $11 million worth of Groupons sold. At 1.3 million and $10 apiece, that amounts to $13 million, though it is unclear just how much of that Living Social gets to keep.
Early in the day, it was said multiple buys were possible, but then the "fine print" was changed to prevent that. Additionally, some early buyers said they could use Deal Bucks for the purchase, but that was also changed later in the day.
In early December, Living Social received a $175 million investment from Amazon.com, which is where this daily deal obviously came from. Meanwhile, rival Groupon recently turned down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google, and has been speaking to bankers about a possible IPO, some say in the Spring, and possibly valued at $15 billion.
You can still see the deal, although it's obviously expired, at the original location here. It's possible all the sales will not stand if Living Social decides to revoke the buys for some who purchased multiple gift cards.
Comments
1,301,296 sold! This deal is exactly what social marketing is all about and it's a great win for both Amazon and LivingSocial. Go big or go home! I started a site to track all of the Groupon clone sites that are springing up.... I've got 130 group buying sites so far and you can sort to see which have offers for your city. If you know of any I'm missing, please submit them through my site. http://www.localdealsites.com/
savemore a groupon / living social copy cat is giving away 50 pairs of tickets to Superbowl 45! with that they are throwing in a $500 visa too!
http://www.savemore.com/?r=f9ea93ca-db19-e011-810b-005056a20007
The consumers will get the benefit of rivalry between groupon, liingsocial and google offers.
This will lead to a Win-Win situation for the business. i would recommend a B2B deal site that creates relationship between businesses. Masterseek’s global search engine provides quick and free access to, among other things, company profiles, contact information, and descriptions of products and services from more than 45 million companies in 75 countries.
http://www.masterseek.com
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