Can we all get a better deal by making purchases together?<\/p>\n
That’s the idea behind a new breed of “group buying” Web sites — at least one of which may be valued at more than $1 billion.<\/p>\n
It’s hardly a stretch to predict that group buying will become one of the biggest Web trends of 2010, and the market leader will be one of the most closely-watched sites of the year.<\/p>\n
Groupon<\/a>, which traces its origins back to 2008, has a simple premise: If enough people agree to buy something, they all get a big discount.<\/p>\n Today’s deal for those in New York: Save 50 percent on a $20 purchase of cupcakes from “ChikaLicious Dessert Club.” If 450 people agree to the deal, everyone saves money.<\/p>\n If that critical number is not reached, however, the deal is a dud. The site offers one deal per day in the cities it covers, and the number of cities in the network is growing fast.<\/p>\n It’s a good idea for sure, but it might also be an incredibly valuable one. Web rumors this week suggest Groupon may be in the process of\u00a0raising a new round<\/a> of venture capital at a $1.2 billion valuation. The money follows a $30 million round that valued Groupon at $250 million. In layman’s terms: Investors think Groupon is set to be the Web’s next breakout hit.<\/p>\n Groupon’s competitors are seeing big investment, too. Rival siteLivingSocial<\/a> recently raised\u00a0$25 million<\/a>.\u00a0BuyWithMe<\/a> has raised\u00a0$5.5 million<\/a>. How many group buying sites are there now? Possibly dozens:\u00a0SocialBuy<\/a>,\u00a0Groop Swoop<\/a> and\u00a0Scoop St.<\/a>, to\u00a0name a few<\/a>.<\/p>\n The dynamics of group buying mean that Groupon has a significant early advantage, however: The more users a site can gain, the more leverage it has to score big discounts from businesses.<\/p>\n It’s a hot market we should have seen coming. The\u00a0top Web trends<\/a>at the start of the year included the “real-time Web” and “location.” With almost constant web connectivity provided by smartphones and free Wi-Fi at coffee shops, airports and bookstores — not to mention the immediacy of Twitter and Facebook — we’ve come to expect instant gratification online. Group buying meets that need.<\/p>\n Groupon is local, too, targeting deals to metropolitan areas. There’s a further trend Groupon capitalizes upon: Social networking brings us together to share opinions and experiences … why not deals too?<\/p>\n Is Groupon worth a billion dollars? Could the group buying market be worth multiple billions? Investors seem prepared to make that bet.<\/p>\n Editor’s Note:<\/strong><\/strong> Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of\u00a0Mashable<\/a>, a popular blog about social media. He writes a weekly column about social networking and technology forCNN.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Can we all get a better deal by making purchases together? That’s the idea behind a new breed of “group buying” Web sites — at least one of which may be valued at more than $1 billion. It’s hardly a stretch to predict that group buying will become one of the biggest Web trends of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[89,5],"class_list":["post-3341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-mashable","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}(Article from\u00a0CNN<\/a>)<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"