The latest from TechCrunch
- Groupon's Brazilian Site ClubeUrbano Loaded With Fake Deals
- Even At Launch, Kindle For Android Is iPhone's Poor Cousin
- The Top 10 Swatch Watches
- Facebook Hiring 500 People In India
| Groupon's Brazilian Site ClubeUrbano Loaded With Fake Deals | Top |
| Red-hot deal site Groupon has been a tear lately. Hot off a $135 million funding round that valued the company at $1.35 billion , it recently acquired European deal powerhouse CityDeal, Chilean deal site ClanDescuento, and mobile development studio Mob.ly . But it seems that some of its expansion strategies are downright shady: we’ve received three separate reports that ClubeUrbano , Groupon’s Brazilian site that it acquired earlier this month, is loaded with fake deals and venues that don’t even exist. As one source put it: “Fake names, stock photos, fake addresses, everything.” We reached out to Groupon, which confirmed that the majority of the deals are not real, save for one running in São Paulo — deals from the site’s 30+ other locations are for venues that don’t exist. So why is this happening? Groupon President Rob Solomon explains that Groupon’s standard practice when it expands to a new market is to show users examples of the kind of deals they could get once the site goes live in their city. All of the fake deals on ClubeUrbano, he says, are meant to serve this purpose, but he concedes that Groupon has “done a terrible job of calling that out on the website”. Soloman says this will be fixed immediately. In other words, up until now there hasn’t been anything on the site explaining to users that these deals were merely examples. Granted, users haven’t been able to sign up for these deals so they haven’t lost any money, but this is still shady — it makes the site look far more popular than it actually is, which could be used to both attract more customers and more businesses clients. Also odd is the fact that the phone number listed on ClubeUrbano doesn’t work (Solomon says that the number is real, and that Groupon is working with the phone company to get it working). Could this just be an honest mistake, where a designer forgot to clarify that these deals were merely examples? Sure. But I seriously doubt we’re the first to raise questions to ClubeUrbano about the validity of its deals — something doesn’t smell right. That said, even if this was done deliberately, Groupon HQ may have been unaware of the practice — Groupon’s Latin American sites, including ClubeUrbano, are being run by its recently acquired CityDeal team, which is based in Berlin. Groupon was also criticized when it acquired Chilean site ClanDescuento, as bloggers alleged that the site had built up its user base through agressive spam tactics. CrunchBase Information Groupon Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Even At Launch, Kindle For Android Is iPhone's Poor Cousin | Top |
| Finally, there is now a Kindle reader for Android phones . Amazon wants to sell electronic books across multiple mobile devices, and currently supports its own Kindle readers, iPhone, iPad, IPod Touch, Blackberries, PC and Mac computers via a desktop client , and now Android. You can read any of the 620,000 books available on the Kindle in the Android reader, and sync your bookmarks and library across other devices so you can pick up where you left off on your laptop or Kindle reader. Compared to other Android apps, the Kindle is a winner and will likely become extremely popular on the platform. It promises to turn any Android tablet into a serious e-reader But compared to the latest version of Kindle for the iPhone and IPad, which just came out last night , it lacks a couple key features: namely support for audio and video playback. The Video Kindle, as I like to call it, is only available on the iPad/iPhone. The Android Kindle also a couple other major features. There is no full-text search, and you cannot buy books from within the app. Instead it kicks you to the Web store where you have to purchase via the mobile browser. Both of those deficiencies will be fixed soon, promises Amazon. No word on whether the Android version will support audio or video playback. It is pretty clear which platform Amazon is putting its resources into first. (Hint: It is not the Kindle device and it is not Android). CrunchBase Information Android Amazon Kindle 2 Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| The Top 10 Swatch Watches | Top |
| In honor of the passing of Nicolas Hayek , CEO of the Swatch Group, we decided to wax a little nostalgic about his most breathtaking – and lucrative – product: the Swatch watch. Swatch was the brainchild of Elmar Mock and Jacques Müller, two engineers who were attempting to make the thinnest wristwatch in the world. Instead, they created a simple plastic quartz watch with a movement that contained only about sixty pieces instead of the 100 plus found in Japanese quartz movements at the time. Hayek saw this as an excellent opportunity to create a “throwaway” watch that could be worn for a season and then swapped with another model. Artists and designers bedecked the watches in odd patterns and the company brought the nascent Swatch Group, formed by Hayek in the early 1980s, to the forefront of Swiss watch manufacturing. At $20 or so, these watches were amazingly cheap and many collectors bought two at a time, one to wear and one to keep hidden away. The watches married high tech with high design and, given their fashion-forward nature, are the precursors to many of the design decisions made today by CE manufacturers. The iPod as an object of desire couldn’t have existed without the Swatch paving the way for inexpensive but highly designed objects to woo the consumer into regular upgrades. Here are ten of our favorite Swatch innovations: Read more… | |
| Facebook Hiring 500 People In India | Top |
| Facebook recently announced it would be opening an office in Hyderabad, India, to be able to provide better round-the-clock and multilingual support to its ever-increasing number of users, advertisers and third-party developers. According to Business Standard and India Times , the company is set to launch its India operations from the ‘City of Pearls’ – its first office in Asia – within the next two months. In a press release on Sunday, the State Information Technology and Communications department said Facebook had been granted permission by the government to set up an office in a business incubator at the Raheja Mindspace special economic zone (SEZ). The new office will add to Facebook’s operations in Palo Alto (California), Dublin (Ireland) and a recently opened office in Austin (Texas). According to The Economic Times , an Indian government official also said that Facebook has been allotted about 50,000 sq ft space and is going to recruit close to 500 people for running its operations. Facebook, which has nearly 8 million users in India and nearly 500 million users across the globe, would reportedly invest $150 million in the initial phases. CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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