In a bold first move into social commerce and daily deals FriendFinder Networks, which runs a series of dating sites, has purchased the company behind the daily deals site JigoCity.
This is another big player diving into the daily deals scrum, attempting to pair the popularity of social commerce with an unrelated core business. But there’s no word on how FriendFinder will use JigoCity. Ideally, they could use it to pair up partners with daily deal date coupons.
And therein lies an interesting proposition for daily deals. This brings a social encounter to the daily deals structure that was not there before: romance marketing. A man takes a woman on a date, introduces her to a new venue for entertainment, tells her that this came together through a daily deal.
She may downgrade him a couple reputation points in her mind, but perhaps she becomes another user of the daily deal strategy. Impressing your date with novelty and a steeply discounted offering.
JigoCity is one of the few social commerce companies operating in more than five countries and plans to expand into as many as four additional countries by year’s end. The company generated revenue of approximately $600,000 in July and approximately $1.1 million in August and has rapidly grown its user base to over 1 million members.
Marc Bell, CEO of FriendFinder Networks Inc. says the acquisition gives the company ways to monetize foreign markets, specifically the fast-growing China and the Asia-Pacific regions. The deal, done in cash and Friend Finder shares, values JigoCity at approximately $65 million.
