Nicholas Cavet

Groupon has taken its next step into the supermarket aisle following its initial foray into consumer packaged goods back in April. At the time, Groupon unveiled its first deal for a CPG brand – a $20 General Mills Sampler Pack & Coupon book – that sold out (4,500 units) by mid-morning.

The second act comes in the form of a partnership with Big Y Foods stores that offers a $39.99 “Shellfish Grill Pack” for just $24. The deal will be added to purchasers’ loyalty cards, and automatically applied at the checkout. For Groupon, this is an entirely new approach to CPG deal distribution, which had previously been relegated to printed paper and redemption codes displayed on mobile devices.

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Last week Quora announced that the buregeoning Q&A platform will be flip-flopping on its prior promotions policy, which until recently had prohibited answers that were “primarily self-promotional” in nature. The rationale for the abrupt change, according to a Quora spokesperson: “Personal experience is an asset, not a liability, and is a key element of many of the best answers on Quora. The quality of the answer is what we care about.”

Why should marketers take notice? The most obvious and immediate benefit to answering questions in Quora, aside from engaging a growing community of information seekers and consumers, is the increased weight Google has given to the platform.

Since inception, Quora has ranked high in organic results in Google for many in-market phrases and questions. Recently, Google started including Quora results in it’s realtime search results, providing further evidence of the search giant’s belief in and commitment to the platform (and social search in general).

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What’s better then a good deal? A good deal – with friends. That’s according to Emily White, Director of Local at Facebook, as part of this week’s announcement that Facebook will offer local deals as part of an Alpha program in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco.

There are four ways users will be able to find out about deals in their area:

1. Deals updates through email and notifications
2. A new Deals tab located on the home page
3. Through news feed stories when friends take advantage of a deal
4. Personal Messages & Wall Posts
5. Sponsored Ad Units (Read 360i’s POV on Sponsored Stories)

Facebook will also be publishing deals offered by third parties including aDealio, Gilt City, HomeRun, kgb deals, OpenTable, Plum District, PopSugar City, ReachLocal, Tippr, viagogo and zoos.

The launch of Facebook Deals for Businesses represents Facebook’s most notable investment in social commerce since announcing they would require game developers to utilize Facebook Credits for in-game purchases back in January. Users can pay for deals using credit card, PayPal or Facebook credits.

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Live streaming broadcasts are nothing new, but when the largest purveyor of online video throws its hat in the ring, it’s time to take a fresh look. YouTube announced today that it has officially launched its live streaming video service, called YouTube Live.

GeekBeat.tv streams live via YouTube

Thus far, the live streaming opportunity is limited to a select group of YouTube stars and popular shows including Revision3‘s, The Totally Rad Show, Dan 3.0 and Destructoid. It doesn’t appear as though any brands were invited to participate as part of the program launch, though an EA Sports Shift 2 Test Video was appearing in the upcoming shows list earlier in the day.

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Offline group participants say that online activity is a crucial part of their offline experience (image via Pew Research).

Social anthropologists have been studying the way human beings behave in groups since the 19th century. We as humans have an innate desire to assemble, share ideas and accomplish goals by collaborating with our like-minded peers, and what was true 200 years ago still holds true today.

But since the dawn of the Internet, it’s been a commonly held belief that this truism doesn’t extend to those who spend a lot of their time online. A recent study from the Pew Research Center disproves that theory. In fact, the study demonstrates that Internet users, and even more so social media users, are actually more prone to participating in offline groups than those who are not active online.

The Pew Research study indicates that Internet users are more likely than non-users to be active in offline groups: 80% of internet users participate in groups, compared with just 56% of non-internet users. Additionally, 82% of social network users and 85% of Twitter users were cited as being active group participants.

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