Groupon continues strong growth, with 115M subscribers

Subscribers of group coupon buying service Groupon Inc have more than doubled to 115 million to date, reports Reuters.

Groupon had 50.6 million e-mail subscribers at the end of 2010 and the company reported 83 million subscribers after the first quarter 2011. That number has since increased by 38 percent, according to an unnamed source in contact with Reuters.

The source also indicated that very little of that the subscriber growth is attributed to the acquisition of other services.

Groupon lets users purchase steeply discounted deals from local merchants. Discounts range anywhere from 30 to 80 percent off the regular sale price on food, trips, drinks at a local bar, etc. Groupon takes half of the money from every deal sold, which is a pretty easy way to bring in a lot of money without having to get creative.

The Chicago-headquartered company is still running at a loss despite the astonishing revenue growth, which went from $94,000 in 2008 to $713 million in 2010. More recently, it lost $146.5 million in the first quarter of 2011.

Those kinds of financial numbers, along with the company’s screwy ACSOI metric used to show income, has caused Groupon to amend its initial public offering, as we reported earlier today. Groupon first filed for a $750 million IPO in June.

Groupon was unavailable for comment about the total number of subscribers.