Remember the Group Buying Explosion? This Is the Instant Deal Explosion–And Merchants May Not Need Groupon Or Foursquare

Adrianne Jeffries — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 08:15:59 -0400

Last week we wrote about how the launch of instantly-available deal alerts from Dealburner and Foursquare’s integration with Groupon Now signaled that real-time deals were the newest front in the group buying marathon, which spawned hundreds of Groupon clones all fighting for air. Now a start-up out of Kansas City is rolling out instant deals with a five-hour expiration in New York and other cities starting September 1.

The instant deal start-up is called Five and Fifty, and it's offering discounts to merchants for free via an ad network that reaches 85 million mobile subscribers through placements in apps, video, mobile websites and direct through SMS, a reminder that Foursquare, other check-in services and the big daily deal players aren't the only ones who can serve real-time deals. We're preparing ourselves for the barrage of press releases.

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Remember the Group Buying Explosion? This Is the Instant Deal Explosion–And Merchants May Not Need Groupon Or Foursquare