Thanks for this link; it could not have arrived at a better time. Need to go paste this into a couple email threads... ;)
plenty know about the groupon story, but who remembers when livingsocial was emerging by having people share their top 5 lists on facebook? what about scoutmob which began as a wifi provider?
both of those companies noticed that they were sitting on an large amount of consumer data, and they both figured they could use it to pivot their model towards the emerging group discount space.
But the point remains - don't be fooled into thinking that the grass is always greener. Unless it really is.