Living In Social

by Elias Shams
It is time  for someone to come up with a similar James Brown’s iconic song “Living in America” but,  change “America” to “Social”. Given, the rise of social media, social networking, social search and now our daily social deals and coupons, wouldn’t you agree?

One of our local companies, LivingSocial in social deal and coupon space just raised another $25 m for their Second Round today:

LivingSocial was one of my first coverage back in December of last year as they had just partnered with Newsweek magazine. Their series A round of financing was  $5 million three years ago led by Grotech Ventures. Steve Case, the founder of AOL also personally invested.

Congrats To Another DC Based Web 2.0 Company, Living Social!

They just partnered with Newsweek magazine. Living Social is a developer of popular social networking tools on Facebook! Last month, the two companies opened voting to Facebook users, polling millions of people about the moments and figures they felt helped shape the first 10 years of the 21st century. Newsweek’s editors and celebrities also contributed. Results are available at the link below.

Living Social, initially started out as a Facebook developer. However, they have been also creating social app across many social networks past two years or so. They raised $5 million in a series A financing from Grotech Ventures. Steve Case also personally invested. Where is the Steve Case Connection? Living Social’s CEO, Tim O’Shaughnessy, used to work for AOL and also worked for Case at Revolution Health. I still can’t get over with the $10m monthly burn rate of Revolution Health used to spend.

Living Social specializes in social apps that let people organize, review, and discover books, music, movies, restaurants, video games, and beer including ReadingSocial, TuneSocial, ReelSocial, BrewSocial, etc. They launched in February of 2008. I think they have about 40 million users. I read it somewhere.

Although, the catalog of reviews may become a valuable database, but not sure the apps themselves are that popular. I am saying that based on their number of active users on Facebook.

So, check them out and let us know what you think.