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I recently had a beer with a client of ours and the subject turned to Groupon. We didn’t talk about how they turned down Google’s $6 billion dollar offer. Nor did we discuss how they started 2010 doing business in one country and ended the year having expanded to thirty-five countries.
With beer inspired hubris, my friend and I talked about how we’d make it better (as if they weren’t doing well enough) and what we would do to improve their service.
So I did a little research – what would it take to build a system like Groupon? In typical web programmer style I did some sleuthing to find out if the wheel had already been invented – sure enough it has.
I ran across three different systems which will enable you to roll your own Groupon, relatively quickly and easily.
Chompon.com – appears to be more oriented for publishers looking to run their own Groupon like sites and sales.
Tippr.com – has white label “Powered by Tippr” widgets to embed within existing sites and they’ll also bring deals to the table.
En Masse (www.matamko.com) – is a Joomla plugin that adds a social buying widget to the popular open source content management system.
Groupon has had amazing growth, but will they be able to maintain it given the intense competition from LivingSocial, EverSave, Google and dozens of others like the ones above?
2011 will be an interesting year for group buying – I’m gonna go get my deal on!
