Kyle
Lately the news about Groupon hasn’t been the good news we’re used to hearing. First, there is a group of investors that are suing Groupon suggesting that the Chicago based startup had cooked the books. Also over the weekend Groupon disappeared from Apple’s iTunes app store.
That hasn’t stopped them from making acquisitions though. Social check in, recommendation, chat with friends app Ditto.me was just acquired by Groupon. Terms of the deal were not disclosed however a post on Ditto.me’s website clearly indicates that this is a total acquihire.
Ditto’s founder and CEO Jyri Engestrom posted this on ditto’s website:
“We can’t reveal what we’ll be working on at Groupon but we are excited to give it 100% – to enable this, we’ll be winding down Ditto. On April 30th we’ll switch off the service and remove the app from Apple’s and Nokia’s stores*. We think you’ll love what we and Groupon dream up next.”
If Groupon manages to come out of the investor lawsuits unscathed and whatever this issue is with the Apple iTunes app store they have their work cut out for them. As a pioneer in the daily deals space, they are just like FourSquare. FourSquare was a pioneer in the check in space, but then after checking in that was it. The same thing holds true for the original Groupon, you’ve got group deals, and daily deals, everyone has those now.
Groupon may be using this acquihire of Ditto.me to make their daily deals and group buying app more social. Perhaps share deals with friends and then go in together? The technology is definitely there as is the technical know how from Engestrom.
We’ll be watching this one closely.
source: Forbes
