When Groupon acquired Pelago-Whrrl recently, it was not uncommon for some to be reminded of eBay taking ownership of Where. Larger enterprises stepping into “hyper-local” easily comes to mind as the theme shared by these two events. But, maybe not. There is no doubt that expertise was an incentive in both situations, but outside of that, each acquisition had its own specific influences.

Pelago-Whrrl’s intriguing products and services definitely caught Groupon’s eye. This fits right in with Groupon’s intention to expand its offerings in the marketplace with more and more products including Groupon Classic, Groupon Now and Groupon Stores.

It is quite apparent that Groupon wants to capture new customers and handle the whole scope of customer relations; all this was up to now Foursquare’s territory. SMBs won’t be its only target, as it dedicates attention to bigger fish and name brands as well.

When things run smoothly, Milo and Paypal hook-up perfectly with Where, which is why eBay took possession. Only if a lawsuit comes into play will any patents owned by Where be used as a defense. There might be a myriad of location based service patents out there, and they might have a purpose, but they did not increase prices enough to notice much. eBay has been outspoken about all this being based on offline and online connection more than the LBS and mobile increases in statistics. Since that is Milo’s main goal and something Where can be supportive of, the end result will be more mobile and online users heading to a local outlet.

Local, as the most common marketplace, has needed and wanted to take better advantage of the huge customer base that really enjoys buying in-store. This aspect was almost missed before LBS and all the mobile enhancements. Checking out all the details is great online, but the majority love to shop at a brick and mortar location. Even the best predictions for days to come put e-commerce sales statistics at 10 to 15 percent of the total retail sales, which is an increase over the 4 percent, or so, it holds now.

It really is sort of a twist that mobile will go further with e-commerce than the big names like Amazon and eBay. Now, mobile is truly becoming “digital meets the everyday world”, represented remarkably by these two recent acquisitions; however, the characteristics of each are definitely different in their primary motivation. Fortunately, small businesses should reap the benefits that these type of hook-ups provide; it certainly is a plus when the customer comes in with a lot of information already in hand.

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• The company’s 2010 revenue is listed at $760 million, of which $285 million was generated from countries outside of the US. That’s over 23 times Groupon’s 2009 revenue of just $33 million. This massive surge means that revenue for 2011 is now expected to be in the billions of dollars.
• National deals generated 12% of the company’s revenue in Q4.
• The company now employs 4,000 people as opposed to just 120 in 2009. About 75% of the company’s current employees are categorized as “overseas”.
• The company now operates in 565 cities, again a huge improvement over the mere 30 cities that the company worked in for 2009.
• In 2010 email subscribers reached 51 million, with that number expected to almost triple in 2011 to 150 million.
• There has been no word so far on whether a public offering would be made in 2011.

Groupon currently has the numbers on their side, and can count on such spectacular growth to continue for at least two more years thanks to their expansion on both the national and international level. This should give the company the time it needs to grow and mature its business model to make it a lot more attractive and beneficial to SMBs.

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