LivingSocial
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Type of site
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Electronic commerce |
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| Available in | English and others (for 27 countries) |
| Owner | LivingSocial Inc. |
| Created by | Tim O'Shaughnessy, Aaron Batalion, Eddie Frederick, Val Aleksenko |
| Key people | Gautum Thakar (CEO & President) |
| Revenue | $536,000,000 (2012) $57,000,000 (2015) |
| Website | LivingSocial.com |
| Alexa rank |
 2,465 (July 2016[update]) |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Launched | June 29, 2007 (as Hungry Machine) |
| Current status | Active |
LivingSocial is an online marketplace that allows its registered users to buy and share things to do in their city. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., in 2013 LivingSocial had roughly 70 million members around the world. The company shrank from a peak of 4,500 employees in 2011 to about 200 in 2016.
LivingSocial was founded as Hungry Machine in 2007 by four employees from Revolution Health Group. The company's first major application was their Visual Bookshelf application on Facebook which allowed users to catalog and share their favorite books with friends. Later, the company released PickYourFive and other Polls applications, making LivingSocial the number one application developer on Facebook as measured by page views. After acquiring BuyYourFriendADrink.com in 2009, LivingSocial launched a daily deals website, which since has become its highest grossing venture to date.
It was reported that the company had raised $800 million and was valued at $4.5 billion. In 2011, it generated $238 million in revenue but lost $499 million. In 2012 a class action lawsuit was filed against LivingSocial with respect to the expiration of deals, following a similar action against Groupon. A provisional settlement was reached in November 2012.
In 2012, the Government of the District of Columbia offered the company a number of tax breaks and incentives to open offices and hire workers in Washington, DC. However, a year later the company did not reach the size it needed to be for the tax breaks to kick in, as it had begun laying off workers and subleased offices it purchased earlier. It also announced it was changing its focus from daily deals to a web site and mobile app.
On April 26, 2013 it was announced that LivingSocial's database had been hacked, affecting 50 million registered users. The announcement stated that credit card information was stored in a separate database and was not compromised, but that user information including passwords, previously encrypted by LivingSocial as a precaution, had been exposed. On May 1, 2013, the Attorneys Generals of Connecticut and Maryland Attorney sent a joint letter to LivingSocial requesting additional information about the incident, as well as more details about the company's data management policies and procedures.
In November 2013, LivingSocial's website went down for nearly 48 hours after a database error.
In 2014 it laid off 400 employees, and in 2015 laid off 200 putting it at about 800 employees, down from a peak of 4,500 in 2011. In 2016, it laid off half of its remaining workforce.
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