Groupon, the site that offers huge discounts to local businesses, just sweetened the deal even more by partnering up with Ebay, the worldwide online auction site. The partnership brings Groupon’s daily deals to Ebay with an added treat – users who buy the deal on Ebay get bonus Ebay Bucks.
TechCrunch broke the story this morning, calling the partnership “arguably symbolic” and for now, it’s true. The partnership involves little more than groupon deals showing up on groupon.ebay.com, though it could be a great deal of exposure. On the consumer end, each purchase made on Ebay rewards with a 5% kickback of Ebay Bucks.
Of course, while the current integration may be surface-level only, it can only help to propel the site’s ridiculously fast growth. In August, Groupon increased its unique visitors by 23%, putting it fourth on a list of the 250 fastest growing properties on the Web.
Last week, the local deal site partnered with Ning and we can likely expect more partnerships of this kind on the horizon. Who’s next? Yahoo? Citysearch? Can Groupon get into the location-based service game with a company like Foursquare or Gowalla?
