I apologize if I'm missing some blatant sarcasm, but could you elaborate? All of the points in the article (which I'm hoping you read) seem valid.
Groupon has never felt like a good deal at even half it's current share price. To me, it seems like a company who got lucky through a serendipitous combination of our "bubble 2.0" frenzy, great marketing, and cherry-picked success stories.
I really want to understand what I'm missing. Why is Groupon this titan of deal sites? Is is their color scheme? Is the technology behind their site so amazing that other companies can't conceive of them? Are Facebook and Google too stupid to come up with a decent competing product? Is it brand recognition? Is it because they have Derrick on their unsubscribe page? Please help me understand.
You don't understand massive revenues, massive growth, massive cash on hand? You don't understand how valuable it is to have cracked one of the hardest industries: local advertising? You don't understand how much it has diversified its business? In order: because it is the best and the biggest. No, stupid question. No, it's not a technical play, it's a marketing and execution play (like most things). Yes, as we have seen. Yes. No, but that is representative of clever culture. You need way more help than I can provide.
Do we really need to pretend that this article is worth driving to the top of HN with a long discussion about the merits of Groupon, or can we just recognize an cynical, intellectually bankrupt attempt at grabbing pageviews by stirring the pot for what it is?
This was a thoroughly stupid article, no matter what you think of Groupon.
A faintly warmed-over rehash of arguments we’ve discussed many times on HN, without depth or fresh perspective. Worth reading if you’ve never read anything about their business model before. Otherwise, pass.
What always struck me about Groupon is nothing to do about vendor complaints. If that was going to kill them it would have manifested as failing demand. It's a kind of no one goes there, too crowded argument.
The problem was/is almost the opposite, competition. I never saw, understood Groupons sustainable competitive advantage, especially in new markets/cities. They're obviously competent, but they are so easy to copy. $10k site, $100k ad campaign, 3 salespeople and you have a Groupon clone ready to compete in any city. We have a Groupon clone in the building I work in.
Anyway (getting to the actual content of this article), GRPN & FB seem to have something in common, at least to the extent that this article is correct. By IPO time all the value was already taken off the table.
You would think that with 100s of failed efforts to copy that people would not be making this argument any more. It is obviously extremely difficult to copy and there's a very big scale advantage (deals go where the eyeballs are, eyeballs go where the deals are). And I don't think Groupon has capitalized too well on that as the deals have become incredibly generic (like the photography is not even business-specific).
Also 100s of successes. Also a bunch that are a success for a while and then fail for a while. Exactly how you expect a market with low entry barriers to behave.
There are lots of cities where Groupon are one of several similar sized sites.
With the "Macbook Boondoggle" article and now this I have to wonder what the heck is going on at RWW? Is there any quality control about what articles go up? Any editing process at all?
The interesting point: the couponing market is saturated, so Groupon must grow into new markets or find new products for its existing systems and software.
I wouldn't bet on this kind of metamorphosis. A slow death spiral is more likely as Groupon runs out of room to maneuver.
See? Now you don't even have to read this article. You're welcome.