Likebees – The Group Discount Site With Upmarket, Social Ambitions

Group buying seems to be developing into one of the web trends of 2010.

With Groupon and its many imitators offering discounts for events and activities if enough other people sign up for the same deal by a deadline, you might think that there isn’t room for yet another company to join the fray. Likebees thinks differently.

The service, which launches today in London, wants to set itself apart from the “Groupon clones” by aiming to be a ‘higher class’ service with a social dimension.

Although the site will launch with a similar model to other group buying sites, Likebees has plans to introduce a social and user-generated approach to its deals. Although co-founder Yannick Roux is reluctant to give away to many details of how this will work, he did reveal that they will be offering ‘Group Passes’ that will encourage users to redeem their discount at the same time. This will aim squarely at ‘real-life’ friends.

Whether the social dimension to Likebees will be enough to sets itself apart from Groupon and its existing rivals remains to be seen but Roux tells me “Our brand’s look and feel is different from all the “voucher” sounding clones. We are getting a lot of appeal amongst merchants who do not want to be asssociated with a cheap discount website which diminishes their brand.”

Focusing on London initially, there are plans to expand Likebees throughout Europe once the business model has been polished. Likebees has been self-funded by Roux and his co-founder Luca Faloni, although they are currently in discussions for a seed round.