????在科技界中，現下恐怕沒有哪個領域比團購類網站更能引起人們的熱議。人們往往稱Groupon是“世界上發展最快的公司”，它最近剛剛提交了IPO申請。不過據報道，美國第二大團購網站LivingSocial最近也挑選了一支承銷商團隊，說明這家公司也離掛牌上市不遠了。

????不過在LivingSocial的首席執行官蒂姆?奧肖內西看來，仍有一個重要的領域是Groupon的短板——這就是創新。上周在科羅拉多州阿斯彭（Aspen）舉辦的《財富》科技頭腦風暴大會（《Fortune》Brainstorm Tech conference）上，奧肖內西毫不客氣地批評了他最大的競爭對手Groupon。

????以下節選了他的發言的精華部分：

????團購的概念就是把大量的買家聚集到一起，好從賣家那里獲得折扣——無論賣家是大是小。團購這個概念自古有之，不是什么新鮮事物。不過近年來科技的一些發展，使得這種聚集可以在很短的時間里實現。哪怕就在五年、十年以前，你還上不了谷歌（Google），用不了Facebook的社交廣告，不能通過網絡在某個特定的市區里大范圍地定位目標顧客。不過現在可以做到這一點了，因此聚集用戶群成為可能。

????我們已經成立四年了。其中大部分的時間我們都在網上和網下開拓市場。（我們的團購業務則剛起步兩年）。最近，我們推出了一款名叫“Living Social Instant”的即時團購服務，它可以讓你買到便宜的午餐。圍繞著這項服務，我們還開展了“一元午餐日”活動。

????在你住的地方，不出三個街區，可能就有30個消費的去處。但是現在沒有特殊的激勵因素讓你特別想去其中的某一家。現在我們讓商家具備了爭奪消費者的能力。如果午餐的時候他們店里的客流量比較稀少，那么他們就可以即時推出攬客的措施。

????我們推出了LivingSocial Instant以后，Groupon不久也推出了他們的即時團購服務（Groupon Now），它完全克隆了我們的LivingSocial Instant。我們推出了旅游類團購服務LivingSocial Escapes，不久Groupon也推出了Getaways，完全就是我們的產品的翻版……也就是說，我們推出了LivingSocial Instant和LivingSocial Escapes，他們就跟風推出了與之競爭的產品。

????我們現在正在繼續打造新產品，切實成為聯系商家和消費者的紐帶。最后，我們會非常關注如何拉近商家和消費者的距離。我相信我們能做到這一點。

????譯者：樸成奎

????Few areas in tech are more buzz-worthy than the daily deals space right now. Groupon, often dubbed the world's "fastest-growing company," recently filed for an IPO, while LivingSocial, which reportedly picked a team of underwriters for its own public offering, isn't far behind.

????But as LivingSocial CEO Tim O'Shaugnessy sees it, there's one crucial area where Groupon lags: creativity. During last week's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo., O'Shaughnessy took a few a swipes at his biggest competitor.

????Here's an edited portion of his comments:

????The concept of aggregating a lot of people together in order to get discounts from a business, whether it's large or small, is not novel and has been around forever. But I think a couple of things have happened that have allowed this aggregation to occur in a pretty short period of time. Even five, 10 years ago, you couldn't go to Google (GOOG), you couldn't go to Facebook social ads and actually target people at scale in a particular metropolitan area. You can do that now, so you can actually aggregate that user base.

????We're about four years old. We've been playing around in the online to offline world for most of those four years. (From a daily deals perspective, it's been about two.) Recently, we did a dollar lunch day around a new product called Living Social Instant, and a real-time product where you as a consumer are going to go grab lunch somewhere.

????There are probably 30 places you could go within three blocks of where you live, and right now there's no incentive for you to go to one place over another. So we're providing the ability for merchants to bid for your business, and they can do it in a way where, if their lunch rush is slow, they can actually put something live at that point in time.

????So we launched LivingSocial Instant, and Groupon launched their clone of that later [Groupon Now]. We launched LivingSocial Escapes; they just launched Getaways, their clone of that, following that. ... We launched LivingSocial Instant and we launched LivingSocial Escapes, and they've since launched -- subsequently launched -- competing products.

????We're continuing to build new product releases, and really be that connective tissue, and I think at the end of the day, we're pretty much focused on operating and bridging that gap, and we can do that successfully.