Amazon Getting into Social Shopping

Social shopping sites (mobile coupons, group offers or deal of the day services) have proliferated since Groupon started getting traction. Now Amazon.com has launched its own deal-of-the-day service in Chicago, the Wall Street Journal reports. Amazon Getting into Social Shopping (subscription required).

Google has started slowly rolling out its own Groupon-like offerings see Google Offers.

Social couponing, or social shopping, sometimes called "deal of the day," is becoming a serious business, but it also is easy to dismiss. It's just coupons, right? Maybe not. The coupon is the tactic used to aggregate buyers. It is a rival channel to alternative coupon channels and other forms of local advertising and promotion.

The group-buying industry is expected to grow 138 percent to $2.66 billion in 2011. The business is highly fragmented at the moment, with some estimating there are about 439 daily deal email programs serving the U.S. market in the first quarter of 2011.

Nor is social shopping just a nice or interesting stand-alone business. Many believe it will increasingly be integrated with mobile payments, mobile loyalty mechanisms and other targeted forms of advertising and promotion. Read more here.