A few months ago I debated the opportunity (whether it was a real one or not) to approach TimeOut and propose to build for them a deal aggregator for each city they cover. Since there is abundance of deals I thought it was a no brainer. But then for one reason or another I never went on with this idea. A few days ago I discovered that TimeOut just launched TimeOut Deals… now I’m curious to see whether it’s an independent platform and they will source their own deals or it’s an aggregator of all the various players out there. It says “deals hand picked by TimeOut”… hmmm, not sure how to interpret it before I receive the first email from them.

Another site which just launched deals is asmallworld. And as predictable from their copious newsletters, mostly about travelling, it’s about travel deals, ASW Travel Deals (sign in required to see it). More than a Groupon-like service it resembles more of a flash sale a la vente-privee or Secret Escapes to stay within the travel sector.

These are both sensible and predictable moves, although they bare the question whether we’re getting over reliant in deals of some sorts in order to consume. Buy one pizza and get one free. Fly London to Milan return for £50 or you feel like you’ve been ripped off. Eat at a cool restaurant at 60% off. Go to a fancy 5-star hotel for the price of a mediocre 3 stars. And so on.

Is this sustainable? Is this healthy from an economic perspective as well as a consumptions one? Is this the widespread commoditization (forgive my word mash) of products and services? Is this the perfect representation of our society?

I’m not sure I have the answers here, but this exaggeration of deals and offers doesn’t sound sustainable to me in the long run. And if it is, well chances are that we’ve been ripped off for a long time.