DailyDeals.com offers a slightly new twist on the increasingly played out daily deals concept, offering consumers discounts from online-only vendors like Zazzle.com and Novica.com. DailyDeals.com’s CEO Steve Schaffer wants to take advantage of online-only daily deals by integrating them with social commerce. Just because a consumer’s friends online are doing it doesn’t mean they’re going to do it with them, online.
Three Approaches to a Very, Very Crowded Daily Deals Space
Daily deals fatigue is here. Google Offers launched an Android app. LivingSocial has a mobile app, and Groupon’s Groupon Now seeks to rope in casual city browsers who are looking for deals on the fly. Amazon’s daily deals site, Amazon Local, launched this past August. These sites are trying to take a bite out of the hyperlocal market.
Flash sales sites like Gilt.com, EBay’s Daily Deals and Amazon’s Woot.com offer deals on specific pieces of merchandise.
DailyDeals.com isn’t mobile or even tablet-focused. It is wholly online and social commerce-focused, hoping that consumers will purchase a deal, and share it with their Facebook friends, Twitter followers and other social media buddies.
Wednesday’s deal was $20 for $50 worth of custom folded greeting cards at Zazzle.com.
In October, Facebook began integrating with EBay in yet another attempt to bring social commerce to fruition. Facebook’s Director of Platform and Mobile Marketing, Katie Mitic, claimed that shopping was “inherently social.” Schaffer agrees, “I watch how my wife and friends shop, and it’s all about referrals from friends.” That may be true offline, sure, but online?
DailyDeals.com seems like another accidental conflation of the social graph (“this is who I know”) and the interest graph (“this is what I like”). The social web is still evolving, and for now it’s better to pick one or the other. That’s exactly what DailyDeals.com is not doing.
