Two big names are dropping out or seriously scaling back their interests in the daily deal marketplace, an oversaturated field with hundreds of competitors that’s still mostly dominated by dominated by Groupon and LivingSocial. Facebook, which launched its flash deals offering called Facebook Deals last spring, is already pulling the plug on the operation, while local business review site Yelp is significantly reducing efforts to build its daily deal arm, Yelp Deals, which was introduced last summer.
For two years now, new daily deal businesses have been opening almost, well, daily. The daily deal aggregator Yipit now sifts through 30,000 deals a month from some 650+ daily deal sites.
Despite the growth, the daily deal business isn’t quite as lucrative and game-changing as proponents have made it out to be. One sign: Daily deal giant Groupon lost $103 million in the last three months.
Read more: How daily deals are losing their allure — for businesses and consumers alike