{"id":896,"date":"2011-01-20T13:02:41","date_gmt":"2011-01-20T17:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kmtom.wordpress.com\/?p=896"},"modified":"2011-01-20T13:02:41","modified_gmt":"2011-01-20T17:02:41","slug":"livingsocial-amazon-com-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ktomdesign.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/livingsocial-amazon-com-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"LivingSocial Amazon.com Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You may or may not have heard of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.groupon.com\" target=\"_blank\">Groupon<\/a> or the idea of it. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reporternews.com\/news\/2011\/jan\/17\/seeking-dealsits-time-to-get-your-groupon\/\" target=\"_blank\">basically<\/a>, it&#8217;s a service that offers (usually) daily coupons on various things, restaurants, spas, golfing lessons, gift certificates. One example is a $40 gift card to a local restaurant for $20 that expires in 3 months. It works for the restaurant, because it might get some new customers into their restaurant and it works for current customers because they get something at a discount.<\/p>\n<p>Well, yesterday <a href=\"http:\/\/livingsocial.com\" target=\"_blank\">LivingSocial<\/a> offered a deal for an Amazon gift card at 50% off. A $20 gift card for $10 with no expiration. Too good to be true? Well, maybe. They&#8217;re definitely <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clickz.com\/clickz\/news\/1938540\/livingsocial-sells-13m-amazon-deals-cost\" target=\"_blank\">losing money on the deal<\/a>. By the end of the day, over 1.3 million coupons were sold.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/kmtom.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/01\/amazon-deal.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-897\" title=\"amazon-deal\" src=\"http:\/\/kmtom.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/01\/amazon-deal.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So why do something like this? Well, they&#8217;re currently losing to Groupon (or at least they were). According to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.websitemagazine.com\/content\/blogs\/posts\/archive\/2010\/09\/15\/cashing-in-on-the-daily-deals-craze.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Website Magazine<\/a>,\u00a0as of September 2010, Groupon had 40% of coupon seeking traffic while \u00a0LivingSocial had 20%. I&#8217;m sure that this not only increased traffic but it also increased LivingSocial&#8217;s member base and awareness in the marketplace. I bought the deal. How could you not? And I told my friends and my mom. My mom had never heard of things like this. Well now she knows, and now she&#8217;s bought one. And I can pretty much guarantee she&#8217;s going to buy another and maybe even more than that. So how much will the dropped $10 on her first LivingSocial purchase actually net for the company? Probably more than $10.<\/p>\n<p>Now, since we&#8217;re on the topic, I am not very happy with LivingSocial&#8217;s website. Here&#8217;s just a few reasons why:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It caches your location. So if you go in and are on a national deal page, it thinks your in D.C., even if you&#8217;ve set your\u00a0preferred\u00a0city. This is the cause for the other two gripes:\n<ul>\n<li>Why is the above deal showing for Washington, D.C.? I am not near Washington, D.C. I&#8217;m signed in and have set my\u00a0preferred\u00a0city. I get it&#8217;s a national deal, so show the USofA!<\/li>\n<li>When you go to LivingSocial.com, it actually takes you to the 3rd link on the left navigation list (URL:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/livingsocial.com\/deals\/how_it_works\">http:\/\/livingsocial.com\/deals\/how_it_works<\/a>). Why? Why tell me how it works? I&#8217;m already signed in, I&#8217;ve already bought a deal. Just show me today&#8217;s deal!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>I still haven&#8217;t gotten my deal!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So what are we to do now? Well, I guess we&#8217;ll just wait and see what they follow up Amazon&#8217;s deal with. Today, LivingSocial has a <a href=\"http:\/\/livingsocial.com\/deals\/21139-50-off-tasca-restaurant\" target=\"_blank\">European Restaurant in Brighton<\/a> while Groupon has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.groupon.com\/deals\/yak-yeti-restaurant\" target=\"_blank\">Indian and Nepal Cuisine in Somerville<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So what <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lokango.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">else<\/a> is there?<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Did anyone take advantage of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/livingsocial-server-flaw-2011-1\" target=\"_blank\">loophole<\/a>? I wish I had known&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may or may not have heard of Groupon or the idea of it. But basically, it&#8217;s a service that offers (usually) daily coupons on various things, restaurants, spas, golfing lessons, gift certificates. One example is a $40 gift card to a local restaurant for $20 that expires in 3 months. It works for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,3,6,8],"tags":[66,69,82],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ktomdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ktomdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ktomdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ktomdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ktomdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ktomdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ktomdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ktomdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ktomdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}