Because baseball games are no longer used to settle land disputes and damages from horse collisions, they’ve become the battleground for deciding which U.S. city will be the first to move to the moon. Catch a nation-changing showdown with this GrouponLive deal.
The above is an actual quote from a Groupon deal for Mets tickets at Citi Field against the Phillies, White Sox, Pirates, and Reds. Yeah, i have no idea either.
Don’t believe me? Here’s the link to the Groupon deal.
(via amandarykoff)
A virtuoso study in up-selling? Although if baseball games decided issues of moon colonization you’d probably have to pay more than $8 for a ticket.
Elizabeth Spiers: “One month ago, I interviewed then-Groupon CEO Andrew Mason for a forthcoming Fast Company feature on the future of Groupon. His performance—at turns, defensive, weary, combative, and naïve—foreshadowed his firing on Thursday.”
“He once experimented with sleeping in his clothes to see if it would allow him to get out of bed later. He immediately deduced that this was a bad idea and the experiment terminated fairly quickly.” Former CEO, everyone.
After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today. If you’re wondering why… you haven’t been paying attention. From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that’s hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.
You are doing amazing things at Groupon, and you deserve the outside world to give you a second chance. I’m getting in the way of that. A fresh CEO earns you that chance. The board is aligned behind the strategy we’ve shared over the last few months, and I’ve never seen you working together more effectively as a global company - it’s time to give Groupon a relief valve from the public noise.
For those who are concerned about me, please don’t be - I love Groupon, and I’m terribly proud of what we’ve created. I’m OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you. I’ll now take some time to decompress (FYI I’m looking for a good fat camp to lose my Groupon 40, if anyone has a suggestion), and then maybe I’ll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive.
If there’s one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what’s best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness - don’t waste the opportunity!
I will miss you terribly.
Mason has had a troubled tenure with the company since it went public and struggled on the stock market. Which is why he’s out. But that hasn’t stopped him from dropping phrases like this one: “If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through.”
Did the Groupon do it? A relatively-new DC restaurant with a novel concept — “Back Alley Waffles” — recently shut its doors after just three months in business, blaming Groupon for the deed — specifically, the company’s slow payment processes. They went so far as to charge $450 a piece for a waffle, in an attention play. So what happened? “Even though we’d already laid out most of the money for the $2,600.00 worth of waffles we’d served to Groupon by the middle of June when we received our first check from them,” the restaurant claimed on its Web site, “the check was for only $1,063.03.” Groupon maintains that they weren’t behind the death of the restaurant, saying the restaurant has received two-thirds of the revenue from the deal already — though the restaurant itself says the second check came a full week after the restaurant closed. Anyone suddenly want waffles? (photo by Sahar R. from the restaurant’s Yelp page; ht HuffPo Tumblr)
Like the New York Times but don’t like paying a ton of money to subscribe to that paper of record? Today’s your lucky day. $1 subscriptions for two months of digital NYT on Groupon today. Whoot. (ht @Romenesko)
On the comedy side, the network that brought us Twitter-based $#*! My Dad Says and Twitter-based actor Ashton Kutcher is once again showing its affinity for new media. CBS has greenlit Friend Me. Here’s the (rather extensive) logline: “Twentysomething best friends, Evan and Rob, move from their hometown of Bloomington, Ind., to Los Angeles to begin their exciting new lives working at Groupon. Evan is having trouble breaking his old slothful habits and rather than go out after work to explore L.A. and meet new people, prefers to play online poker with his buddies back home. Rob has different plans and is determined to drag Evan, kicking and screaming, along with him.” Cast includes Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Nicholas Braun.
The nerdy dude from “Superbad” somehow makes this idea less nerdy. The company just had its first profit, and they’re screwing it up already. Sigh.
You know, in this case, I’m really not interested in getting more personal with Groupon. This is also the opposite of living social.
Yet another reason we wish the internet was the real world. Remember when Facebook announced that it might, maybe, potentially, could see itself having an IPO in 2012? Well, Zynga, perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the Facebook ecosystem, has beaten them to the punch. The popular social gaming company’s shares are now available for the public to purchase. The “Farmville” company’s stock, listed as “ZNGA” and priced at $10 a share by the company, hasn’t had a particularly good morning, falling below its IPO price at one point. Currently, it sits at just over $10. Will the stock begin to lean in Groupon’s downward direction, or will it aim for Facebook status? source
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
» How does one misstate $400 million in revenues? Good question! Let’s ask the COO, Margo Georgiadis, what she thinks happened. Oh wait, she just resigned after five months and went back to Google. Meanwhile, chief executive Andrew Mason says that her departure offers an opportunity “reorganize in a way that reflects our evolving strategic priorities.” Great answer. We learned so much from that statement. (Edit: To explain what happened, when Groupon sold a coupon, they counted the entire coupon as revenue, despite the fact they only got half of the coupon. The SEC said that was a no-no, so now Groupon looks a lot less valuable.)
Guess what Fox News yakker just started their own Groupon-style site? If you said Glenn Beck, *ding* *ding *ding* we have a deal! We wonder how soon it’ll be before Beck’s hawking gold on this thing.
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