I don’t have much interest in Groupon, not as a company, as a company the concpt sounds great my interest comes solely based on personal belief – I’m of the mind that reasons to out-earn my spending habbits as oppose to find every miserable opportunity to save money. With that said I’m aware that I’m one of the few people in the world that thinks this way and that Groupon in concept caters to the larger mass, but after losing 42.7 million is the company a fad or a trend?

Groupon (a portmanteau derived from “group coupon”) is a deal-of-the-day website that features discounted gift certificates usable at local or national companies.

Groupon was launched in November 2008, and the first market for Groupon was Chicago, followed soon thereafter by Boston, New York City, and Toronto. As of October 2010, Groupon serves more than 150 markets in North America and 100 markets in Europe, Asia and South America and has amassed 35 million registered users.

The idea for Groupon was created by now-CEO and Pittsburgh native Andrew Mason. The idea subsequently gained the attention of his former employer, Eric Lefkofsky, who provided $1 million in “seed money” to develop the idea. In April 2010, the company was valued at $1.35 billion.

According to a December 2010 report conducted by Groupon’s marketing association and reported in Forbes Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, Groupon was “projecting that the company is on pace to make $1 billion in sales faster than any other business, ever”.

However, a report from Forrester Research in October 2011 suggested that the Groupon business model was a “disaster”, and that the firm had become an example of “how fast an Internet darling can fall.”   In its first earnings release as a public company, Groupon reported a fourth-quarter loss of $9.8 million on an adjusted basis, disappointing investors.

Excerpt from: Wikipedia

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