Groupon earnings report: The daily deals site’s crummy business model is finally dead. Hooray! - Slate Magazine

Not such a bargain

"Now, after a spectacular debut on the Nasdaq, Groupon is a public company. On Monday, it reported its second-quarter earnings results. The numbers were dismal. They paint an unmistakable picture of the future of Groupon and other similar sites: The daily deals industry is drying up. Groupon reported that its customer growth slowed substantially over the second quarter; the amount of money that each customer spends on the site tanked; and the company’s “guidance” for the current quarter suggests that things are going to get a lot worse. The spin from Groupon’s executives was not very encouraging. In a conference call with analysts, the firm’s CEO Andrew Mason kept talking up Groupon Goods, a service in which Groupon sells discounted merchandise to customers—in other words, something completely different from the coupons that earned the firm its IPO."

Groupon earnings report: The daily deals site’s crummy business model is finally dead. Hooray! - Slate Magazine