Groupon | featured news

Online coupon seller Groupon Inc. is discounting its expectations for its first stock offering. The company, which offers consumers daily deals targeted to their city and preferences, now expects net proceeds of about $478.8 million from its initial public offering of 30 million shares.

I wrote here at Forbes in May about the dangerous trend of unaudited numbers being used by companies, media, and investors to evaluate the potential of these IPOs... As long as they get their return before the gig is up, who cares what the real story is?

Groupon is going to wait at least a couple of weeks before launching the final phase of its initial public offering because regulators still have questions for the daily deals website and the stock market is too volatile, a person familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.

On the 25th of April Facebook's discount shopping platform Facebook Deals was unveiled and I belligerently declared Groupon as good as toast. Today Facebook announced that it will soon shutter its Facebook Deals product.

... Groupon, far from representing some kind of new paradigm, is a phenomenon we’ve all seen many times before: a money-gushing dot-com that’s gambling it can make it across the IPO finish line by keeping the conversation focused on revenues (growing) rather than P&L (worsening).

Groupon Inc's rapid growth has attracted rivals and regulators, a twin threat to the largest online daily deal company as it gets ready for an initial public offering.

As Groupon clones have proliferated, the loyalty to Groupon of both consumers and merchants offering online deals has eroded.

Compared to Groupon, which has enormous administrative costs and is hemorrhaging a lot of money, Zynga is a ruthlessly-run, well-oiled machine.

To win in the fast-growing digital-advertising market, Web companies such as Facebook, Google and Groupon are increasingly wooing mom-and-pop businesses.

Groupon was forced to restate fourth quarter earnings, sending its stock down 6% in after-hours trading. This surprised me as much as my $2 investment in the Mega Millions jackpot not paying off.