The Top 30 Group Buying Deal Programs - Rated

From the ashes of the meltdown of the 2008 and 2009 world economy comes a number of group and local deal services targeting local-based retailers and the people that shop there. It is truly the marriage between three rising trends - e-commerce, localization and social networking - wrapped up in a discount envelope. I've had no fewer than ten people ask me about the comparative strength of these services - apparently many of their sales teams are pitching superiority in their proposals.

I'm of two minds here. On one side, this is a heck of a lot better than targeting discounts and coupons through newspaper from an effectiveness, from a tracking and from a pay-for-performance standpoint. As a client interested in ROI or a retailer counting their pennies, this type of service gets a lot closer to knowing which part of your marketing spend is effective. 

On the other side, I see a nation of retailers, from high end boutiques to low end discounters, training their clientele to shop based on price and ceding over their customer lists to others in the process. Is this just a better more contemporary, socialized version of the coupon that allows more real estate to promote your offering or is this the Walmartization of local merchant economy?

That economic and moral question aside, we have reviewed and rated 30 of the top deal services based on the following criteria:

        - User Experience (20 pts)

        - Quality of Deal (20 pts)

        - Differentiation of Offering (15 pts)

        - Design (15 pts)

        - Socialness (10 pts)

        - Breadth of Deals (10 pts)

        - Number of Cities/Places (10 pts)

We'll release our ratings next week but hopefully give their founders and executive staff a chance to provide additional thoughts and highlight their strengths on their group wares. I'll individually evaluate each site in follow up posts.

In the interim, here is our preliminary rating of their Twitter presence. Twitter IQ scores were given based on number of followers, quality and frequency of posts, depth of engagement and smart Twitter behaviour (response/promote ratios, central and city-based pages):

Company	Location	Lead Account	Following	Followers	Listed	Tweets	Twitter IQ Score
Gilt	NYC	@giltgroupe	2499	11851	825	660	19
Living Social	Washington	@livingsocial	3042	7516	480	2577	19
TeamBuy	Toronto	@teambuy_toronto	1876	1704	81	793	16
Scoutmob	Atlanta	@scoutmob	4143	6077	305	2214	16
Red Flag Deals	Toronto	@redflagdeals	21	5904	246	6077	14
GroupOn	Chicago	@groupon	3	5225	359	114	14
My Daily Thread	Atlanta	@mydailythread	2001	1404	81	1312	14
Grooster	Vancouver	@groostervan	1446	1233	77	220	13
Webpiggy	Toronto	@webpiggy	2001	1073	62	1189	12
Social Buy	Los Angeles	@social_buy	931	788	42	1111	10
Scoop St.	NYC	@scoopst	363	671	60	2341	10
TippR	Seattle	@tippr	58	921	44	160	9
Twongo	North Carolina	@teamtwongo	1463	769	42	509	9
WagJag	Toronto	@wagjag	1976	1010	43	193	8
YipIt	NYC	@yipit	460	594	44	336	8
Pricebunch	Chicago	@pricebunchchi	802	297	19	63	6
DealOn	NYC	@dealonnyc	138	205	10	196	6
TownHog	San Francisco	@townhog	359	154	14	72	3
At Cost	Los Angeles	@atcostLA	266	85	10	22	3
Bloomspot	Mountain View, CA	@bloomspot	0	72	5	202	2
Home Run	San Francisco	@homerun_com	0	28	4	0	1
Adility	San Francisco	@adility	0	26	4	10	1

Congrats Gilt Groupe, Living Social, Team Buy and ScoutMob for passing our Twitter test with flying colours. Unfortunately Twitter socialness likely only counts for 3% of our total evaluation. For those who work at these companies, we'd love to evaluate your strengths firsthand, so drop us a line or leave a comment below.

We've also left 8 spots open for additions, so please provide us your best other group buying networks/websites for our total evaluation. Happy deals.