Is it me, or does Groupon kinda Suck?

I first signed up for Groupon after reading an article about how it was the fastest growing company (in terms of valuation) in history. I may get the specifics wrong, but as I remember it,  Groupon was valued at something like $6 billion  - yes, billion – in just over two years of existence. At the time, the owners of Groupon had suitors toss billions at them for controlling interest in the company. The owners, in turn, spurned all bids.  Presumably $6B was seen as just the tip of the iceberg.

After reading this, I naturally signed up for Groupon’s daily emails – after all, the fastest growing company in the history of the world must be offering some pretty amazing deals, right? And so it began. 50% off a meal at some Italian restaurant 30 km from my house. Twenty dollars off a car wash at some distant location. On and on it went. Nothing compelled me. Not even close.

So what’s all the fuss about Groupon? Am I missing something? My inbox is already full of emails – from stores that I actually do shop at – offering weekly incentives and offers. And the brands that I choose to “like” on Facebook also offer me discounts. It’s not that I’m not open to a new brand, retail store or experience, but the odds of me being enticed by a random deal seem low – at best.

So, again, what am I missing?  All I know is that if I owned Groupon, I would’ve taken the $6B. Now that would have been an awesome deal.

Grip’s Big Orange Slide blog turned 2 this week. Some notes on our bloggy friend:

It’s popular. Advertising’s favourite little blog has attracted 225,000 pageviews since it came into our world on Friday Sept 18, 2009.

It’s global. We’ve had 135,000 visits from 159 countries including Portugal, Poland, and Brazil. That’s 7 sold-out hockey games at the Air Canada Centre but without the questionable hockey and drunk guys in suits.

The content is compelling. People spent 2:09 per visit reading our thoughts. In an online world where most people skim things in a few seconds, that’s an eternity. (Actually it’s 290,224 minutes.)

But that’s not all! Here’s are three more factlets you may not have known:
1. The top blog post of all time is Photoshop ‘till You Drop by Warren Haas with 3,813 Pageviews, posted July 16, 2010.
2. Over half of all traffic was direct or from Google. Twitter brought us a little more than Facebook. And Humber College’s Creative Advertising program is one of the top blog sources.
3. What’s the 8th most popular keyword search term after “big orange slide”, “grip limited”, “orange slide”, etc.? It’s Steve Rhind, our Group Account Director on Honda. And Julia Morra’s raving fanbase gave her the #12 spot after just joining Grip in January 2011 as Junior Art Director.

Thanks to all of our readers worldwide!

Big Orange Slide is happy to welcome its second guest blogger, R Blank: an entrepreneur, author, community leader and teacher. R Blank has specialized in web technologies for over 15 years, and Adobe Flash for the past decade.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

I had a chance to chat with the Big Orange Slide folks when I spoke at Toronto’s FITC conference in May of this year. At the time, I was just beginning the (still continuing) process of moving to a remote piece of raw land in a national forest in Oregon, to build a home and long-term sustainable life-style for me and my wife.

I knew going in that this project would be intense, forcing me to learn a lot of new information. And on that front I have not been disappointed (I am, for example, increasingly an expert on off-grid plumbing systems).

But there have been many surprising lessons, as well. Among them is the insight I have gained into the “digital divide.”

My contemporaries may remember that the “digital divide” (the chasm between those who can afford access to technology, and those who can not) was a common topic of discussion in the 90s, popularized by President Clinton (since then, it seems that we have encountered many more pressing issues to consume our time.)

While I believe that the percentage of people living on the “other” side of the divide (the “disconnecteds”) has decreased – after all, one can now experience a great deal of connected life on one’s cell phone – I believe it is similarly clear that the size of the chasm dividing the haves and the have-nots has dramatically increased in the past decade.

And with the progress of time, many implications of this divide are now more visible. For example, it would be obvious that since so much of life is now accessed through Safari or Internet Explorer, disconnecteds are increasingly deprived of access to basic information, services and resources. Without early access to technology, the disconnected children are being placed at a massive disadvantage for future prospects in life. And without connected devices and access to the wide variety of contemporary e-commerce experiences, these disconnecteds increasingly exist out of the public marketplace.

These all are important, and clear cause for real concern. But they are nonetheless the more obvious implications.

Less considered is what is happening to those of us on “this” side of the divide, the “connecteds.” It is assumed that we, the connecteds, are on the “right” side of things. To a large degree, I would agree that the connected world brings so many valuable advantages. Wikipedia, let alone the rest of the Internet, is an unbelievable accomplishment and tremendous resource.

Accepting these changes as benefits should not be the end of the discussion. Indeed, I’ve come to appreciate how the connected experience comes at a price. The connected life increases stress of course, but it also alters our perception of time, and even the very operation of our minds, leading to an uncomfortable blurring of the line between human and cyborg. Consider how, if you regularly utilize connected digital devices to execute the tasks in your life, you are functioning as a cybernetic organism, whether or not you feel any dependency on your iPhone. Given the presence of the disconnecteds, we are increasingly seeing the outlines of two completely distinct subsets of humanity, learning to function differently at a fundamental psychological level.

Unfortunately, the limits of a blog post do not afford enough space for me to explain this at sufficient length. This will, however, be the subject of my talk at the FITC Unconference at MAX. Entitled “Disconnecting: Lessons from a CTO Living in a Forest,” this talk will include a longer discussion of these ideas — of the significant, but often invisible changes that we, the connecteds, are experiencing.

Most brands are now familiar with the benefits of implementing social media into their marketing and communication efforts. Social media brand stalwarts like Facebook & Twitter have been incorporated into a myriad of digital campaigns and initiatives through the creation of fan & brand pages. These pages let consumers interact and engage with their favourite brands while reinforcing the bond and connection they have to those brands. The phrase “like”us on Facebook and “follow” us on Twitter has become ubiquitous to our everyday language. Beyond marketing & promotions, savvy brands have utilized social media channels to promote social causes, charitable events and donations to very worthy issues. Consumers have responded in turn by supporting these brand causes  - and these efforts makes them feel good. So how does a consumer extend that feel good, happy buzz using other elements of social media  to create a movement of sorts?  Enter a new concept: paying it forward.

Jonathan’s Card launched on July 14, 2011 as a social media experiment in giving. The premise was simple: Jonathan Stark, an average consumer, purchased a Starbucks card, loaded it with money and created a website to enable anyone to use the card. All you had to do was simply save the photo of Jonathan’s card with barcode onto your own smartphone device, walk into any US Starbucks location and scan that image at point of sale to purchase your coffee – “on Jonathan.”  Jonathan’s original intent was simply to put the card online, promote it via social media, let others use the card and watch the $300 card balance fall. Instead, something unusual happened. Users of his card continued to reload the card balance to the tune of thousands of dollars so that others could also benefit from a free coffee down the road. Utilizing social media channels like Facebook fan pages and Twitter feeds, in addition to the blogosphere, word spread quickly and thousands of people became fans and followers of Jonathan. Thousands more used Jonathan’s coffee card across the U.S., taking care to upload additional funds to the card to pay it forward. Starbucks, while not involved in the campaign, benefited from the goodwill associated with the social media experiment.

Food for thought: What can your brand do to encourage social media community participation in social cause initiatives like Jonathan’s “pay it forward” scheme?