Tag: daily deals

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Disputes News WIPO

Daily Deals website Living Social in domain dispute over LivingSocial.co

Living Social logo

The daily deals website Living Social, which was founded as Hungry Machine Inc., is in a dispute over the domain name livingsocial.co.

The company filed a complaint (case # DCO2011-0041) this week with the World Intellectual Property Organization.

The domain name appears to have been purchased after the landrush period run by .CO Internet S.A.S. the registry operator, which started in late June 2010 and ended in mid July 2010, when prices of applications averaged anywhere between $250 to $300.  Individuals and companies such as Facebook and IBM submitted applications during the landrush phase and domains that received more than one application were eventually auctioned and went to the highest bidder.

It seems Living Social wasn’t interested in livingsocial.co at the time. 

The domain name was acquired by an individual in China when .CO domain names were first made available to the general public.

Livingsocial.co received nearly 2,000 unique visitors last month alone, according to a rough estimate by Compete and the domain is monetized using Google’s Adsense for Domains program.

Living Social’s rival Groupon owns groupon.co, however the web address doesn’t resolve to any of Groupon’s sites.

Over 40 cases involving .CO domain names have been filed with WIPO in 2011.

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News

Newly registered domain names good enough for The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Daily Deal website

San Diego Union-Tribune's daily deal website

The domain name is 18 characters long, cost around $10, and was created on April 8, 2011, but it’s still good enough for The San Diego Union-Tribune. 

Greatestdailydeals.com was one of many domain names hand-registered this week by The San Diego Union-Tribune, which launched its Daily Deal website last April on the URL: dailydeal.signonsandiego.com.  Surprisingly, among the list of newly created domain names, are hyphenated names like greatest-daily-deals.com and top-daily-deals.com.  

The domain purchases follow the Union-Tribune’s acquisition of the lifestyle website DiscoverSD.com. 

And while some companies are shutting down their group buying ventures in face of fierce competition from GroupOn and Living Social, the Union-Tribune is growing.

According to the Sign On San Diego article about the purchase of DiscoverSD.com, “The deal will allow the Union-Tribune to expand its popular “Daily Deal” program, which is expected to generate $10 million this year in new revenue. The U-T’s “Daily Deal” offers discounts of 50 percent to 90 percent off prices at local restaurants, spas, golf courses and other businesses. The Union-Tribune keeps a share of the sales.”

Oddly enough, Union-Tribune didn’t register other domain names like greatestdailydeal.com – which is available at the time of this story.  BuyDomains currently owns the domain greatdailydeals.com and has it priced to sell for $2,088.

I often write about “group buying” and “domain names”.  Despite sales not being astronomical, a domain like dailybargains.com which sold for $10,500 in 2010 – seems like a “deal”.

Categories
News

Looks like ‘Daily Deals’ site for college students just bought uscoop.com for $7,000

uscoop

It looks like the privately held marketing business “U Scoop”, which offers students up to 70% off cool new brands and the best things to do, eat, and see in their college towns, has purchased the domain name uscoop.com for $7,000 USD at Sedo’s GreatDomains. 

Obviously, it’s just a guess since the domain name is still in Sedo’s transfer service, but if you visit U Scoop’s web site (theuscoop.com), the company which was founded in 2010 and has 6 employees (according to its LinkedIn profile), is planning to unveil its web site soon.

Maybe all the company was waiting for was the right domain name to launch their web site?

PokerStars

Of course, I could be wrong.  PokerStars.com owns the domain name uscoop.net, but the domain name doesn’t resolve.  Last week, PokerStars kicked off its USCOOP event (as in The United States Championship of Online Poker). 

However, PokerStars refers to the event officially as USA COOP, so my bet is still on U Scoop as the new owner of the name.

With the momentum of group buying in their favor, and college students always looking for bargains, targeting the niche college market seems like a really good idea.

I signed up for the U Scoop newsletter and just received an email.  Here’s what it said:

Each day our team scours campuses nationwide and surfs hundreds of websites to find the coolest products, fads, and services to keep you entertained.
 
But rather than just write about the daily finds, we give you a reason to try them by offering a 24 hour deal at up to 50% off.
 
And if that doesn’t do it for you, hopefully campus fads, pimped out dorm rooms, and pre-game playlists will do the trick.
 
In the mean time, we’ll keep lining up the deals while you start lining up your friends. Sound good?