Daily Deals Observer: News on the Daily Deals Industry

Restaurant Deal Site Scoutmob Raised $3.25M

ATLANTA BUSINESS CHRONICLE - May 24 - Scoutmob, an Atlanta-based daily restaurant deal startup, has raised $3.25M. Scoutmob will use the money to roll out new products and launch a loyalty program. In November, Scoutmob teamed up with location behemoth Foursquare. Under the partnership, users can redeem Scoutmob's deals from within the Foursquare app. Founded in 2010, Scoutmob employs more than 50 and has 1M users. The startup, which has raised ~$5 million, is "close to profitability".

by Urvaksh Karkaria
See full article at Atlanta Business Chronicle

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MyDealPage.ie Launches Daily Deal Directory App

BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP - May 24 - MyDealPage.ie has launched a daily deal directory app, showing all the offers from Groupon, LivingSocial, GrabOne and many others on one page. The MyDealPage app is available to download for free in Google Play and iTunes.

See full article at Business & Leadership

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CollegeBudget.com Acquires MunchOnMe.com

PR NEWSWIRE - May 24 - CollegeBudget.com, the student-exclusive shopping platform, has agreed to acquire MunchOnMe.com, a food discovery and discount portal from Y Combinator's summer 2011 batch. The acquisition increases CollegeBudget's total college footprint to 2M students. American Apparel and Skype are two prominent brands that have offered popular deals through CollegeBudget's platform. Terms of the deal were not announced.

See full article at Africa Business Review

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Groupon Settlement: $8.5 Million In Class-Action Damages

IB TIMES - May 22 - Certain Groupon customers, who paid for a deal between Nov. 1 '08 - Dec 1, '11, are entitled to part of the $8.5M in damages that have been awarded as part of a class-action lawsuit. Plaintiffs claimed that Groupon Vouchers contained expiration dates and other restrictions in violation of federal and state law. The customers will receive a Settlement Voucher to redeem unused Groupon vouchers purchased in that period.

See full article at IB Times

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Deals.com.au Premium Approach Generates Higher Revenue

INTERNATIONAL.TO - May 23 - With daily deals often thought of as being targeted towards ‘bargain hunters’, Australian Deals.com.au focuses on five star travel deals, targeting the premium end of the market. Deals has offered to travel deals to Vietnam, both of which generated ~$1M in revenue.

by Greg Rogers
See full article at International.to

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TikTok Offers Users Geo-Targeted Daily Deals

MARKETWIRE - May 20 - TikTok, is a new free deal mobile app. It launched first in Vancouver, in April, 2012 and withing 30 days 10K people downloaded the app. Businesses are able to set up free and time sensitive offers. Interested users receive the limited time freebies through geo-targeting on their iPhone or Android devices, and opt to visit the retailer and redeem the offer. TikTok offers a premium account to use the advanced targeting interface.

See full article at MarketWatch

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Travelzoo Australia Passes The 700,000 Subscriber Mark

PR NEWSWIRE - May 19 - Travelzoo Australia's subscriber sign ups has grown by ~20% over the last year. The launch of Local Deals in April 2011 has made a significant contribution. The company also launched an iPhone app in March.

See full article at SacBee

Groupon Launches New Selling App

BAKERYINFO - May 15 - Called Groupon Scheduler, the software improves the visibility and management of merchant partners’ schedules and allows these business owners to set up an appointment calendar covering all their staff, services and locations.

See full article at BakeryInfo

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Groupon’s Q1 Earnings Beat Estimates

TECH CRUNCH - May 15 - Groupon made $559.3M in revenue during the Q1 2012, up 89% YOY. The total amount of money it collected from customers for Groupons sold increased 103% from $668.2M in the same quarter last year to $1.35 billion in Q1 2012. Groupon still reported a net loss of $0.02 per share. For the next quarter, Groupon expects revenue to be between $550 and $590M.The stock is now up more than 17.76% in after-hours trading.

by Frederic Lardinois
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Austin's WhaleShark Buys French Online Coupon Company

STATESMAN - May 15 - Continuing its expansion into Europe, Austin-based WhaleShark Media has purchased Miwim, a leading French online couponing company. This is the eighth acquisition for WhaleShark. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2009, WhaleShark's sites include Deals2Buy.com and CouponShare.com. Two years ago, it purchased RetailMeNot, an Australian company with ~95M unique visitors. Miwim strengthens the company's foothold in Europe, where it owns VoucherCodes.co.uk in the UK and Deals.com in Germany. In November, WhaleShark raised $150M to expand its online network of coupon and deal websites. The investment vaulted WhaleShark's total venture capital haul to $300M. WhaleShark is on track to post revenue ~ $100M this year, up from $80M last year, and is profitable.

by Lori Hawkins
See full article at Statesman.com