What is Living Social? Living Social Review, Features

Living Social is headquartered in Washington, DC, and is the second largest group buying website in the United States after Groupon.

Development History of Living Social

In 2007, four good friends founded a technology consulting company called "Hungry Machine". They are Aaron Batalion, Tim O'Shaughnessy, Eddie Frederick and Val Aleksenko. What they did at the beginning was to develop apps that were hooked up with Facebook, such as voting apps. Later, "Hungry Machine" became a company that pushed business sales information emails to customers. In 2009, "Hungry Machine" was renamed LivingSocial.

Living Social's Business

• Livingsocial launches a group-buying deal every weekday in each of its service cities, with group-purchased goods or services being discounted by at least 50%.
• Stores participating in group buying activities do not need to pay any upfront fees, and Livingsocial charges about 30% of the revenue commission. Similar to many group buying models, users can only activate and use group buying coupons after the group buying transaction is completed.
• Users can log on to the Livingsocial website or obtain group purchase information via email. After a successful purchase, they will receive a redemption voucher via email around 10 am the next day.
• They can choose to print the voucher for consumption, or download the voucher to Google Android phones or Apple iPhone, iPad, iTouch and other devices. While Livingsocial has made a lot of money in the group buying business, it has not forgotten the nature of an application developer. The excellent multi-platform application also provides a strong guarantee for the group buying business.
• Livingsocial does not set a minimum number of group purchasers. Users do not have to worry about losing out on discounts due to too few group purchasers. In addition, in order to encourage more users to participate in group purchases, Livingsocial also launched a new "promotion for free" model. After a user purchases a group purchase, he or she can send the group purchase link to his or her friends. If he or she attracts three other friends to purchase, the promoting user can enjoy free discounts.