Daily digital discounter Groupon raised about $700 million with an initial public offering of stock, according to media reports.

The IPO, which was “priced well above expectations,” was set late Thursday at $20 per share, above the anticipated range of $16 to $18, The Associated Press reported.

Groupon shares surged Friday morning, more than 50 percent in their stock market debut – rising as high as $31.14, or 55.7 percent above the IPO price, Reuters said. Groupon Inc. made its trading debut Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol “GRPN.”

According to The AP, “the IPO’s price gives based Groupon a market value of $12.7 billion. That makes Groupon’s IPO the second largest by an Internet company behind only that of Google Inc. in 2004.”

By comparison, LinkedIn Corp. went public in May 2011 with a market value of $4.3 billion and was worth $8.4 billion at the end of trading Thursday, the report said.

Groupon, which boasts 83 million subscribers, features a daily deal on, “the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in 43 countries,” according to the Chicago-based company, which launched in November 2008.

Earlier this year the digital discounter changed its privacy policy giving the company more latitude with users’ personal information as it prepared for its IPO.

Of greatest concern, perhaps, was the fact that third-parties can tap into your social networks if you allow them.

If you choose to link your Facebook account with your Groupon account, “all of Groupon’s third-party partners not only get access to the information you’ve provided to Groupon, they also get complete access to all your public Facebook information as well,” according to this TG Daily report.

In related news, China’s popular daily deals website LaShou Group is hoping to raise as much as $100 million in its initial public offering to expand its delivery systems and marketing efforts, TechZone360 reported. The company filed the necessary paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Oct. 28.

According to the SEC filing, the Beijing-based company enriches “the online shopping experience of consumers in China by offering attractive group-purchase discounts across a variety of services and products on our website, www.lashou.com, and create a new avenue for large numbers of local merchants in China to grow their businesses.”

LaShou, which was launched in March 2010, offers users from up to 1,000 daily listings of mostly local offerings on substantially discounted services and products in more than 500 cities and towns.

As of Oct.23, LaShou’s cumulative merchant base had grown to approximately 46,000 merchants supported by over 3,100 sales personnel in 184 cities and towns across 31 provinces in China, Hong Kong and Macau, the SEC filing said.