Groupon Clones & Foursquare BoredomBrendan Marsh

Groupon Clones

Groupon, Scoopon, Zoupon, Spreets, Living Social, Jump on It, Cudo, Ouffer – you’ve probably heard of at least one of these by now. The concept of daily deals is so popular that we’re now living in a saturated market where a few players dominate the headlines and the rest dominate your inbox.

Let’s face it, we all love heavily discounted consumerism. But how many of you are receiving a daily deal from YOUR favourite restaurant? I think as consumers, we’re starting to get fed up with all the advertising and the overtly promotional offers. What happened to good old fashioned customer loyalty?

What happened to getting a great deal from the Businesses that YOU love?

Foursquare Boredom

Foursquare recently hit 3 million users, but already we’re seeing new language such as “Check-in Fatigue”. We’re starting to question the value of these social location-based games, as brilliantly addressed in a fellow bloggers article “Falling out of love with Foursquare”.

Sure I’ve got a bunch of badges, but what am I REALLY getting out of it? Does the Business owner even know that you’re there every day at 9am for your cappuccino & muffin? How long until they hear about Foursquare and get off their arse & reward you for your loyalty? I admit, I still use Foursquare, but I’m hanging out for something new.

Groupon in Reverse

For quite some time, I’ve been wondering how to give the power back to the consumer, let them (& their peers) decide who they want a deal from. I’ve also been wondering how this could be applied to a social game.

I’ve shared this desire with my boss Slade Sherman, founder of Myzerr.com – a Social Network for discounts. Could this concept be tacked on to our platform? Not really. Could we make a kick-ass new product that is the answer to Foursquare Boredom & put the power back in the hands of the beer-holder? Most definitely. Enter the world of CrowdSauce.

CrowdSauce

CrowdSauce is our answer to all of these problems. It’s a social game. The object? Pressure businesses into giving you a discount. How? Band together with your mates & ask for a discount.

CrowdSauce aims to use the power of the people to get great deals from Businesses that YOU love. You put the pressure on them, get the numbers and we’ll ask them to provide you with a discount. It’s Groupon in reverse, it’s Foursquare that’s been rewired to benefit YOU.

Join the Crowd

How do you join the crowd? CrowdSauce is currently in development and will be launched before the end of the year.

In the mean time, register your interest in our launch at CrowdSauce.com & keep up to date with happenings at our blog. If you’d like to participate in the beta testing program, shoot me an email: bmarsh [!at] myzerr [!dot] com.

http://familiarsounds.posterous.com R

The trouble with Foursquare is that it either a) launched too soon or b) picked up too many users too fast (if there is such a thing) (I think there is). It’s a great concept and it’s got heaps of potential but the major flaw (point c) perhaps?) is that it’s too flexible and not enough people are aware of it and it’s entirely dependent on the keenness of its superusers to make sure venues are tagged correctly and not duplicated because obviously it’s not something they can keep an eye on themselves. It’s got a Wikipedia-like problem that way. But it’s only compounded because it can’t fulfil its purpose when the only people using it are ‘social media’ nerds that most small business owners are not. It’s just a baby that’s been forced to grow up too fast

I’m STILL out to become mayor of my regular coffee shops just because I can’t stand to have ANYONE else ‘in charge’ – even if there are no offers. MINE.
Pingback: How to fix the problem with Foursquare and Groupon | Slade Sherman
http://www.brendanmarsh.com Brendan

Out of curiosity, I attempted to setup a deal for a Business (Cafe) that I know the owner of. The process was painful & doesn’t result in a speedy creation of a deal. The deal isn’t targetted, it usually isn’t relevant to the loyal customers and often its a dud deal. It surprised me to find that setting up a deal is free, however I wonder if this is the reason that the deals aren’t that great. Look at Groupon clones and you’ll find great deals. Why? Because they know they need to discount heavily to get lots of people, the more they discount, the less they pay in commission to the group-deal site and the more people opt-in.