Deal-of-the-day site Groupon continued its shopping spree on Monday by acquiring social app Ditto.me, a location-sharing service that also gives users personalized recommendations on restaurants, movies and other things to do around town.
The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed, nor were the specifics and why Groupon acquired Ditto.me and what it plans on doing with its new set of assets.
However, judging from the language in the blog announcing the deal, it seems likely that Groupon is poaching the San Francisco startup's talented group of engineers rather than its technology. This possibility is further strengthened by the fact that Ditto will be shuttering its service almost immediately.
“We can’t reveal what we’ll be working on at Groupon but we are excited to give it 100 percent – to enable this, we’ll be winding down Ditto,” the company posted on its blog. “On April 30th we’ll switch off the service and remove the app from Apple’s and Nokia’s (News - Alert) stores. We think you’ll love what we and Groupon dream up next.”
Although execs have yet to unveil their new role at the thriving e-commerce site, Ditto CEO Jyri Engeström tweeted that the team will be working on “something new.” It is still unclear whether the entire Ditto team will make the trek to Groupon's headquarters in Chicago or if they will work remotely in San Francisco.
Ditto users who wish to archive their older posts before the service is shuttered can do so by emailing support@ditto.me.
For Groupon, the Ditto acquisition represents the company's third mobile buy in a matter of weeks. The deal-of-the-day site scooped up mobile app maker Kima Labs in February, just hours after it purchased Hyperpublic, a New York-based mobile startup that builds geo-location software. Unlike the Ditto acquisition, Hyperpublic was purchased mostly for its technology, according to Tech Crunch.
All three acquisitions underscore Groupon's recent push to make their service more mobile – a move that nearly every thriving tech company is making their focus.