The “Flash ecommerce” space got hotter today, as Washington, D.C.-based LivingSocial announced a new $30 million round led by U.S.Venture Partners. Grotech Ventures and Revolution (Steve Case’s company) are also participating.
The fund will be used to launch deal-a-day coupon sites in Chicago, Denver/Boulder, Raleigh Durham and San Diego. These cities are actually live today, along with Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, Mineeaspolis-St. Paul, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C.
Living Social got its start with Visual Bookshelf on Facebook, and has launched some additional applications since then (i.e. “Find a Happy Hour,’ “Pick Your Five”). The company appears mostly focused, however, on the hot Deal a Day space, where it competes with Groupon, which has raised a total of $34.7 Million, as well as a host of similarly themed providers (and many more on the way).
Last August, CEO and co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy told us that he sees the Living Social Deals as “a huge opportunity” to market to customers based on their pronounced online preferences,” and to take those preferences offline.