Daily deals market continues to expand as LivingSocial goes Dutch

Daily deals site Livingsocial has launched today in the Netherlands. The Groupon competitor has gone live in three cities: Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague; although it says that it plans to expand “rapidly” in the country.

The Netherlands is LivingSocial’s third European market, following the UK and Ireland, although it also owns a majority stake in Spain’s Let’s Bonus. Global market leader Groupon is already active 37 Dutch cities. LivingSocial launched in July 2009, and in a similar manner to Groupon, has expanded through a mixture of launching new operations and acquiring exisiting daily deals services. However, its most recent acquisition was a Ruby on Rails consultancy, InfoEther, most likely as a technical talent grab for the Washington DC based company.

Following Groupon’s IPO filing last week, which revealed a major gap between its costs and revenues, there has been much speculation as to the long-term viability of the daily deals market. Still, LivingSocial clearly feels no fear in further expansion.