GroupTabs Begin Offering Group Discounts for New York Business’
GroupTabs is an interesting new social networking venture based out of New York City. The basic premise is somewhat similar to Foursquare, in that GroupTabs is orientated around having its users check-in to various locations around a city. Where it differs from Foursquare is that instead of offering virtual points and icons for being well traveled, GroupTabs will offer special discounts for bars and restaurants which will only become active after a certain number of people have checked in to the location at a predetermined time.
GroupTabs doesn’t want to replace peoples current check-in systems, knowing that application bloat is something that a lot of people are becoming concerned about. Instead they are hoping to release support not only for Forsquare but for Brightkite and Gowalla as well. All potential users have to do is create an account on the GroupTabs website, then any mobile web activated smartphone can access the service from http://gtb.me/.
By encouraging users to connect their GroupTab account with their Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter accounts, the company is hoping that deals will spread virally amongst groups of like minded people .
The service only appears to have been in development since April, with its first deals being made available just last week on August 18th. GroupTabs is one of a number of recent start-ups hoping to find a way to make money using the new advancements in location based services, made possible by the latest generation of smartphones. Potentially this could be a really good idea, for both users and the local business partners that get involved in the promotions.
Foursquare was able to go from half a million to over three million users in just five months, which shows how fast social applications can spread. In a world in which we often use social media as a substitute for active real world socialization, an application which actually encourages inexpensive meet-ups between a group of friends does have a special kind of appeal.
These kind of ventures are always risky, a very large part of whether or not this one will be a success is most likely going to be determined by how many venues are willing to partner up with GroupTabs. To keep people interested they are going to need to offer good deals (unique to their community) on a daily basis. This could be problematic considering that business’ need to pay to be able to place offers out on GroupTabs. However, the company is hoping to combat fears of inflated advertising costs by giving the promotion for free if not enough people check-in to a given location to activate the special offer.
