Groupon CEO: D’oh

I totally love Groupon.

While the concept of a group discount is nothing new, the execution from Groupon was ground breaking.  Companies get new customers, customers get great offers: everyone is a winner.  If ever you wanted a case study of a company that could successfully blur the distinction between on line and off line, and do it in a funky social media way, Groupon would be your candidate.  It’s a poster child for crowd sourcing, and a fantastic idea.

For sure, there have been a couple of examples where the structure of the offers didn’t necessarily benefit the company as much as they might have hoped, and to be honest, I’m not sure why they feel the need to spam me with so many pop ups and pop unders, or send me 10-20 emails a week even though I visit the site pretty frequently, but as I said, overall I love the idea, and I use it a lot.

Of course, famously, Google liked the idea too.  To the extent that they apparently offered $6 billion to buy the company.  And because Groupon said no, they’re now launching their own version.

Facebook must have liked the idea too, and when you have 550 million users and counting, and are looking for new ways of monetising them, Facebook Deals is  a pretty good idea.  Even if it’s not original.

I can’t imagine what Andrew Mason (the Groupon CEO) must have been thinking when he rebuffed Google’s advances, but I can absolutely imagine what he’s feeling right now:

D'OH