Open letter to Groupon pt. 2

Dear Groupon,

In my last open letter to you in February of this year, Groupon, I wrote that in a few years you’d look back on the $6 billion buy out offer from Google and kick yourself for not accepting. Well, maybe it only took a few months for the self booting to begin, the interwebs do move with the alacrity of a jungle cat. According to Hitwise you suffered a 50% decline in traffic from June to August of this year while Living Social saw a 27% increase over the same period. Facebook launched and then killed their shopping coupon efforts due to lack of interest. Coupon sites in general have seen a 25% traffic drop off in traffic. Rumors are that merchants have negotiated down your 50/50 revenue split to 80/20.  And finally, Google launched their coupon efforts. More competition, less traffic, user overload, lower margins…not looking too good.

Six billion. You passed on six billion dollars. Oh, the hubris.

OK, I’ll stop now. Kicking a man when he’s down and all that. Just a few more words for you Groupon….

Six….billion…..dollars.

Vaya con Dios,

Chris.