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Prediction: Groupon will eventually become old news, and irrelevant. A "Copy-Cat" will focus on developing a customer base consisting of quality niche customers, and become the dominate player.

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prediction on top of prediction. There'll be multiple players, in multiple niches and a few larger players in the general market.

prediction on top of prediction on top of prediction: Market forces and economics will come to play. (nature abhors a vacuum, where there's money people will flock).

prediction^3: Interest in group buying wanes both from consumers and business owners. Groupon branches out to a more traditional ad network/ad services company with a local focus to try to leverage their sales staff. Living Social accepts reduced margins compared to todays market and sticks it out in some of the niches that work well like day spas.

Another prediction: Most merchants will start their own deal website like http://thesuperdeal.com/birmingham/deals/recent

Read somewhere that these guys use agriya groupon software, part of their ideas were copied by real groupon in their 2.0 release.

prediction^5: We're all right. All of the above will happen, and many things we didn't see coming.

Also, coupons will still be boring.

That doesn't make sense. The main benefit of Groupon, et al is finding new customers.

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