OK, so here’s the thing. I love Groupon, I really do.
From the beginning I loved the idea. I suffered painfully in the knowledge that I hadn’t come up with the idea, but I was kind of OK with it because I loved Groupon’s angry little vampire cat mascot,
Care of http://www.groupon.com
its witty and irreverent writing style, etc. Plus, the deals were stellar! Groupon really came through for me on massages, on Christmas presents last year, on ideas for fun out-of-the-ordinary stuff to do.
But now, now Groupon has an obscene number of doppelgangers, and I’ve been cheating on Groupon a little bit with a number of different Groupon wannabes: • Facebook Deals • Yelp Deals • LivingSocial • SfGate deals…And dude, it has to stop! Not because I feel guilt or remorse. But just because I now receive about 300 emails every morning from all of these coupon sites. It’s not sustainable, people.
And the little excitement I used to have about checking out the deal of the day has gone- it has gone.
All that said, I’m stoked for the folks at Groupon about their IPO announcement. And I appreciate the manner in which CEO Andrew Mason made the announcement. Cute. However, given my own waning interest in group coupon sites, I really wonder if Groupon shouldn’t have jumped on that $6 Billion offer from Google.
Of course, I’m not exactly a visionary, so don’t take me too seriously. Clearly, there’s much more mobile and geo-location integration to come with group coupon sites, but doesn’t it all just end up amounting to “every store and restaurant and outdoor company is having an ongoing special!”? If anyone can offer a different vision for how group coupon-ing will evolve to become even more awesome in the future, rather than less awesome- I’d really love to hear it.
UPDATE: I’m not the only one with this question.
UPDATE ON UPDATE: The slide has begun.
RecreationCommunication 