Updates over Media, Marketing en Publishing
Today, Groupon has officially found its new chief operating officer. The daily deals leader announced this afternoon that it has promoted Senior VP of Global Sales and Operations, Kal Raman, to COO, where he will continue to oversee the company’s global sales and operations and report to CEO Andrew Mason.
Groupon is gearing up to report quarterly earnings later this month, but in the meantime the daily deals giant has another issue on its hands: it’s been hit with a patent infringement lawsuit by Blue Calypso, a digital marketing firm that claims Groupon is infringing two of its patents, 7,664,516 and 8,155,679, focused on peer-to-peer marketing technology. What’s more, from the sounds of it, Blue Calypso’s legal fights may be just beginning.
The complaint against Groupon has been filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, and a separate statement from Blue Calypso’s CEO, Bill Ogle, notes that as social media companies continue to expand into areas like advertising, they are crossing into Blue Calypso’s patented territory. “As companies try to monetize their social media connections, they are rapidly moving into our technological area of expertise and it is imperative that we protect and secure what we have built,” he said. Blue Calypso’s full complaint, in which it requests a full jury trial, is embedded below.
Lees meerI’ve watched with a bit of dismay as marketers have tried to figure out the social media environment, working to get consumers to buy products and services purely based on electronic communication. The opportunity is huge, especially given the worldwide potential for the company that gets it right, but it also offers the possibility of […]
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After purchasing OpenCal, the makers of an automated online appointment scheduling app, back in September of last year for an undisclosed amount, Groupon quickly went about incorporating the technology. Before long, the company had announced Groupon Scheduler, a service designed to make it easy for both customers and merchants to quickly close the loop between offer, booking, and scheduling. As Groupon looks to build its perceived and actual value for merchants, the OpenCal acquisition, and subsequent launch of Scheduler, made a lot of sense.
Since then, the company has been pretty quiet about Scheduler, but that changed today, as Groupon announced a free beta version of Scheduler, available to all SMBs in the U.S. and Canada.
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At the Goldman Sachs Internet and Technology Conference in San Francisco Thursday, Groupon Founder and CEO Andrew Mason took to the stage to talk about the daily deal behemoth’s newly-minted position as a public company, its roller coaster ride both leading up to and since its IPO, as well as plans for the future.
There was a lot of pressure bearing down on Groupon in the months leading up to its emergence on NASDAQ, with many grumbling about its overvaluation and undercooked business model, among other things. After listing its initial offering at $26 a share in November, the company’s stock today has dropped to $20 a share, after a series of ups and downs.
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Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason was interviewed by Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick on stage at the annual DLD confab in Munich, Germany.
Below are my notes – Mason’s responses are slightly paraphrased.
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You can say a lot of things about Groupon, but not that they lack a great sense of humor over there. This morning, the company distributed a press release touting a new invention called Clicky, the Clickable Value-Wheel (make sure you watch the behind-the-scenes video below too).
The company invites players to sign in with their Facebook account and then spin the wheel to potentially score a discount on select Groupons ($5, $10, $50 or $100).
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Groupon has continued its (talent) acquisition spree with the recent purchase of a hot Silicon Valley startup before they even launched – and with extremely little fanfare.
We’ve learned that Campfire Labs, which was founded by ex-Googler Sakina Arsiwala (previously Head of International at YouTube) and her husband, social search technology expert Naveen Koorakula (previously at search companies like Inktomi, Yahoo and Picch), was quietly bought by Groupon.
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