Groupon adds Stores, Deal Feed to select cities

by David Silverberg

Groupon, the popular daily group-buying deal site, is on the verge of boosting its online cred by adding two key features: Groupon Stores and the Deal Feed. These features are available to Chicago, Dallas and Seattle so far, with more cities rolling out soon.

In a blog post yesterday, Groupon announced it will soon be introducing Stores to merchants. This features allows retailers to skip the middleman and set up their own deals whenever they want. The blog post said merchant can setup a permanent free e-commerce presence on Groupon, with Groupon taking a 10 percent commission on all sales, compared to its usual 50 percent commission on approved daily deals.

Interested merchants can also allow people to “follow” their business, similar to Twitter. Groupon subscribers can be notified of deals via email or the Deal Feed.

Inspired by Facebook’s News Feed, Groupon’s Deal Feed is a stream of personalized deals (Groupon rolled out personalization requests to subscribers recently). The blog post explains: “Your deal feed includes your featured daily deal, deals posted by merchants you follow, and deals posted by merchants that we recommend based on what we know about you.”

Why is Groupon going e-commerce 2.0? The post ends by saying, “With these new features, we can feature more merchants and deliver a more relevant experience for customers, while maintaining the curated, serendipitous and simple experience that’s at the core of Groupon.”

These features come at an opportunistic moment — Google is rumoured to be considering buying Groupon for an estimated $6 billion, and Groupon’s board is reportedly meeting today to discuss the buyout.