Groupon Aquires GlassMap for Better Local Deals

Groupon has just announced the acquisition of Glassmap, a location aware application.  Glassmap was initially known on the tech scene for their location app that worked without draining your phone’s battery, unlike other location apps available at the time.   The app has also been touted for its’ simplicity and ease of use.  Glassmap was initially launched by three Stanford MS program drop outs, Geoffrey Woo, Jon Zhang, and Jonathan Chang, who left to start the company.

In announcing the acquisition, Glassmap stated:

Today, we’re happy to announce that Glassmap has been acquired by Groupon! Our goal when we started building Glassmap was to help people find what was interesting and relevant around them. But in plainer terms, we just really wanted to mold all these fancy ideas and innovations of Silicon Valley into a simple and useful tool for the real world. Groupon has revolutionized how people today use technology to interact with the real world, and that’s why we’re so excited to join them. Together, we’ll be able to create even more amazing products.

Most importantly, we want to thank all our loyal users for riding with us for these past two years. It’s been really fun for us, and we hope to continue delighting you with our efforts with Groupon. The Glassmap application will wind down and close on February 15, 2013.

This is the type of acquisition we often hear about in the tech world, and one increasingly common with the push to increase mobile presence.  Similar to efforts by companies such as Google, the technology provided by Glassmap will allow Groupon to know where you are, what you are doing, and who you are with.  This information would enable Groupon to offer the targeted deals that would be most relevant and attractive to the customer.  In acquiring Glassmap, Groupon is certainly taking steps to increase their relevance by focusing on tracking the real time location of user.

[Image via glassmap]