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LivingSocial's Tim O'Shaughnessy About Local Deals and Not Being Groupon!

October 19, 2010 at 8:09 am PT

Yesterday, before LivingSocial announced the acquisition of the social adventure company Urban Escapes, BoomTown sat down to talk with its CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy.

The entrepreneur has worked at AOL, as well as at Steve Case’s Revolution Health in Washington, D.C., before moving on to the local deals start-up. Case was an early investor.

LivingSocial now has about 10 million subscribers to its social discount offers online, where it competes head-to-head with Groupon, which has garnered much of the attention in the hot arena.

Both companies have been garnering huge fundings, which are being used in a race for dominance in the space.

O’Shaughnessy talked about all this and more in the video interview below, which we did in Palo Alto, Calif.:

Tagged with: adventure, AOL, arena, BoomTown, California, deals, digital, discounting, entrepreneur, funding, Groupon, Internet, interview, Kara Swisher, LivingSocial, local, Palo Alto, Revolution Health, Start-up, Steve Case, subscriber, Tim O’Shaughnessy, Urban Escapes, video, Washington D.C.

comments so far. Add yours.

Anonymous

“We aren’t really like Groupon but every way I explain it, it just sounds like Groupon…”
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OCKNB2R6P24XDOHOFVZTIZAWQA Jacob Andersen

i still cant see how groupon works for retailers
i love groupon
but i wont ever pay full price again
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OCKNB2R6P24XDOHOFVZTIZAWQA Jacob Andersen

i wish you asked him about all the competitors
everyone can copy all of this and they are

margins gonna come down?

will yahoo buy them?

none of these companies have anything

we sign up to 10 of them

10 deal of the days

all we care about is the deal

and we never go back and buy at full price. NEVER!
http://twitter.com/lyneka lyneka little

It seems like Living Social is more like Goldstar, a discount Website I already receive daily deals. I’m not sure if I will sign up because I don’t want the same deals sent to me.

I think we need a rating of the deals presented on these group deal Websites. For example, after it shot to popularity, Groupon became more fond of stripper pole dancing classes than the average bear. But, at the beginning, I discovered restaurant gems from the Website.

But, what about service heavy deals that are offered? I bought a 90 minute massage, and the masseuse punched the clock on that the moment I was called into the room to undress –leaving me inside for 10 unnecessary minutes– and then stopped the massage before the timer rang. (I guess he factored my dress time in the length.) THIS resulted in a bad review for the company but what’s the reasoning behind this poor service? Before hand, I presented them with a groupon. A groupon that I would say impacted the customer service and care of the massage.

Fastforward to Websites like Living Social and Goldstar that offer deals to dinner and movies and etc. One complaint I read on goldstar, they saved 70% on the dinner theatre but were placed in the worst position in the house. Behind a tree! Those nose bleed seats went to those shopping by discount.

These hidden things aren’t going to create long-term customers to group Web deals. I’m already less inclined to take online group deals seriously based on poor service by the entities signing up for the deals.

If Groupon, Living Social, Goldstar and etc. can’t get the companies to nail the customer service, what hope is there for keeping the upwardly mobile audience that they need?

Can I rely on Living Social to consider the customer service of an entity before offering a deal?

LivingSocial's Tim O'Shaughnessy About Local Deals and Not Being Groupon!

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