LivingSocial, the US social commerce site offering city-based group-buy deals, announced today that it has secured $25 million Series B round of venture funding led by U.S. Venture Partners, with Grotech Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution, LLC participating.
With 85 million followers, and present in 13 US cities, LivingSocial is a city-based Group-Buy site that works like Groupon, offering daily half-price city deals in local restaurants, spas, bars, retailers etc. You sign up to a local deal feed, choose a deal and pay for it upfront online, and then receive an email/mobile voucher which you exchange for the goods/services. It’s simple, and proving to be hugely popular.
For any brands and retailers thinking of offering their own group-buy social commerce solution (and we think it’s worth considering), it’s noteworthy that LivingSocial adds a nice social twist to the Group-Buy offer; you can syndicate your purchase through social media (Facebook, Twitter et al.) and if 3 of your friends sign up for the deal, you get it for free. Lovely. (See images below – LivingSocial makes this referral program a high profile component of their offer).
With the $25m LivingSocial deal, there’s something of a trinity of hot social commerce solutions emerging for 2010…
1. Group-Buy
2. Private Shopping Clubs
3. f-commerce (e-commerce within Facebook)
How is your brand or business planning to profit from the hot social commerce trinity?
sell with low price for more detail
Hello! This post could not be written any better! Reading through this post reminds me of my previous room mate! He always kept talking about this. I will forward this page to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Thank you for sharing!