Daily deal sites like Groupon are launching all over the world to fulfill the voracious appetite of deal-hungry customers that want to obtain deep discounts from both national and local merchants. Groupon and other group buying websites are making money hand over fist by merely featuring the merchants’ 50% off deals to their enormous list of email subscribers. Many people, including myself, have criticized the daily deal business model as an effective tool that business owners can use to generate more revenue. The fact is that many local merchants will actually lose money by offering these 50% off deals because they only earn 25% of what they’d normally make on each sale (Groupon gets half of the other 50%). Despite that fact however, local businesses are requesting to be featured again and again on social buying sites like Groupon. Read more »

There’s no denying that daily deal sites like Groupon are incredibly effective at getting new customers to visit local storefronts. Despite their powerful ability to generates sales for merchants, the costs that business owners incur by advertising with group buying sites can be overwhelming. Many business owners have reported that daily deal websites have actually done more harm than good for their company. Common problems that businesses experience when offering group buying deals include things like a drop in online ratings (i.e. Yelp), overselling coupons, overbooking appointments, and a lack of staff members to handle the flood of new customers. Read more »

Daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial offer huge discounts on products and services through partnerships with local merchants. These deal of the day websites can produce wonders for local small businesses that need foot traffic. Traditional online advertising isn’t nearly as effective as social buying platforms for getting people to visit local storefronts. For approximately the same price as a decent-sized online advertising campaign, a collective buying site will feature your business’s deal offering on their website and notify local email subscribers. With many of these online services boasting readership in the millions, they can literally flood your store with hundreds to thousands of new customers within a single day or two. Read more »

Daily deal sites like Groupon can be a small business owner’s greatest tools for generating sales. However, daily deal websites can also cause more harm than good if the business owner doesn’t do his/her homework upfront. Most daily deal business models take about 50% of all coupon sales leaving the business owner with only 25% of the original price amount for the product or service. That’s because most deals sold there offer 50% off the original price. As you can see, it can be quite costly for any entrepreneur to utilize a deal distribution service. Read more »

Remember Twitter before November, 2008? Don’t worry, neither do most people. A year ago the microblogging juggernaut started to skyrocket in popularity as celebrities began flooding it with their own personal tweets. Once they began promoting it throughout various television interviews (e.g. Larry King Live with Ashton Kutcher and Sean Combs) and infomercial-like talk show specials (e.g. Oprah) it became a nationwide tech phenomenon that everyone and their mom just had to try out. Read more »

In case you hadn’t noticed the Twitter homepage now tells you how many new tweets you have. On your @mentions page, the same alert appears at the top of the page. For most browser users, the Twitter tab will also display the number of new updates you have, depending on which page (home page or @mentions page) you currently have open. The tab indicator is similar to what we’ve seen for years with various email services, yet it highlights the necessity to continuously stand out from other tabs you may have open in your browser. Read more »

Vidly is bringing HD videos to Twitter, reaching for quality features in order to attract the right type of clients. The Twitter video client is reportedly hoping for brand participation with the introduction of HD video capabilities with its service. Similar to the manner in which you share photos through third party clients on Twitter, Vidly offers the same type of service for video. With a number of video-Twitter services emerging in the past few months, Vidly may be looking to stand out from the crowd in order to become a leader in this particular space. Read more »

PayPal recently has announced its new API for Facebook developers, enabling them to more officially create payment options to work directly within Facebook applications. Many Facebook apps with virtual currency payment options already supported PayPal, but without dedicated support tools from PayPal the potential for glitches or incompatibility were higher.

The decision by PayPal to add support for Facebook through its API is also a nod to the Facebook platform itself, indicating that the power for Facebook to become an influential marketplace for virtual goods is all but a matter of expectation. So where is this all going? Read more »

Product placement in Twitter. It’s nothing new, but it is becoming more widespread and could become problematic if not kept in check. Recently Amazon announced a new feature for Amazon affiliates to easily share products on Twitter. This move could generate a massive amount of revenue for Amazon but it could also cause a lot of problems for Twitter users too (i.e. more Twitter spam if it’s abused). You can currently see the responses about Amazon’s new Share on Twitter feature by searching for the hashtag ‘#AMZNSOT’. While searching the tweets it seems like there’s mixed feelings about the overall move by Amazon. Read more »

According to T-Mobile, many of their U.S. mobile customers are experiencing problems making calls and receiving text messages. This all started at about 5:30 PM EST and they are reported to be working diligently to repair the issues in a timely manner:

We’re making good progress restoring voice and messaging service to affected customers. At this time, approximately 5 percent of T-Mobile customers are experiencing service disruptions.