Starbucks deal breaks Groupon website
An offer for a $10 voucher for a $5 payment sets the Internet afire. It's not the worst problem for the company to have, however.
Updated 4:08 p.m. ETGroupon (GRPN) offered a tough deal to resist Friday: Pay $5, and get a $10 voucher to use at Starbucks (SBUX).
The Internet came alive. More than 100,000 people bought the deal within hours.
The traffic was too much for Groupon's website to handle, however. The site wasn't able to load pages, it couldn't complete purchases and reverted to the Groupon.com home page.
People took to Twitter to air their grievances. "I guess the Starbucks offer has rendered the Groupon website highly unstable and prone to tectonic shifting!" wrote one user. "Starbucks fanatics have crashed @Groupon," wrote another.
"Groupon's site is struggling to stay up," wrote another. "Apparently it's touched upon what people really want to buy: cheap Starbucks gift cards."Some people were still having problems by Friday afternoon.
Not the best situation for Groupon's frenzied Web staff, but still a nice problem for the company to have. Investors were loving it; shares of the stock rose 5.4% Friday afternoon to $5.71.
Groupon needed a boost after the board fired CEO Andrew Mason late last month. Groupon is now looking for a new CEO. Until one is found, co-founder Eric Lefkofsky and vice chairman Ted Leonisis are acting as co-CEOs.
So add this to the must-have list for the next boss: Someone who can keep a website alive.
You'd think they were the US government, operating like that....
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