• Social Commerce Startup LivingSocial Hits 10 Million Subscribers, Buys Urban Escapes

    Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

    Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

    Social shopping site LivingSocial this morning announced the acquisition of Urban Escapes, a social adventure company.

    Urban Escapes offers trips that promote a “fun and active lifestyle and a chance to escape the day-to-day rat race”.

    Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but according to the FAQ in the blog post, Urban Escapes’ entire full-time team has moved to LivingSocial’s office in New York in Union Square.

    Initially, the company says, Urban Escapes staff will work directly with LivingSocial reps in 5 introductory markets designing and creating adventures (e.g. this Snow Tubing & Beer Tasting trip), but will eventually expand to the 95 markets LivingSocial is now live in.

    Coinciding with the acquisition news, LivingSocial has also disclosed how many subscribers it has attracted to date: 10 million.

    The Groupon rival has raised just south of $50 million to date, putting it in a position to snap up smaller niche players to grow in other ways than organically and by launching in new cities and countries worldwide.

    Company: LivingSocial
    Website: livingsocial.com
    Launch Date: 2007
    Funding: $808M

    LivingSocial is the social commerce leader behind LivingSocial Deals, a group buying program that invites people and their friends to save up to 90 percent each day at their favorite restaurants, spas, sporting events, hotels and other local attractions in major cities. LivingSocial has an extensive user base of more than 85 million, and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

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