• Loopt Beats Groupon To Notifying You Of Nearby Groupon Now! Deals

    Alexia Tsotsis

    Alexia Tsotsis is the co-editor of TechCrunch. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the media industry. After four years of living in New York and attending courses at New York University, she returned to Los Angeles in... → Learn More

    Friday, May 20th, 2011

    Loopt a checkin app that seems to be pulling out all the stops in order to survive in a saturated space, has now partnered up with Groupon Now! in Chicago in order to provide Loopt users with locationally relevant realtime deals around them, push notifying them when they are near a deal.

    While the plan is to notify users of deals when the app isn’t even open, and the time sensitive Groupon Now! deals will also appear on place pages within Loopt, so users can see and share with friends their favorite relevant deals in the vicinity.

    Loopt has basically beat Groupon to bringing this LBS/realtime technology to its own app, where you still have to type in your zip code to get more granular locational deal notifications. But Groupon recently acquired Pelago, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar functionality is on its way.

    Currently the specific Loopt service is only available in Chicago, and users who are interested can go into their Loopt settings, turn Reward Alerts on and start receiving their once a day, location specific Groupon Now! deal well, now!.

    As 14% of subscribers interact with daily deal push notifications, this is a mutually beneficial and strategic partnership between the two companies. But one can help but wonder when Groupon will apply this same technology to its own mobile app and what exactly that will mean for Loopt long term.

    Loopt is planning on expanding the Groupon Now feature nationwide, and it should be available on both Android and iPhones in each market.

    Company: Groupon
    Website: groupon.com
    Launch Date: November 11, 2008
    IPO: July 11, 2011, NASDAQ:GRPN

    Groupon features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in more than 565 cities around the world. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, Groupon can offer deals that aren’t available elsewhere. Groupon brings buyers and sellers together in a fun and collaborative way that offers the consumer an unbeatable deal, and businesses a large number of new customers. To date, it has saved consumers more than $300 million and claims it...

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