Hello New York! So we haven’t really talked about all of the cool functionalities and gadgets that 8coupons has out! Everything we do always goes back to our mission to make it as easy as possible for you to get the best local deals.

Everything from our mobile coupons that lets you take the deals with you and use it whenever you want to without carry around little pieces of paper, not to mention letting you live a little greener, to our RSS feeds for your feed readers such as Yahoo, googel reader, etc., to our e-mail deal alerts, and now our latest gadget, the 8coupons widget - compliments of spring widgets.
Basically, you can download this little gadget straight to your desktop or blog/website and it will provide automatic updates on the latest deals on 8coupons. If you haven’t used widgets before, I highly recommend trying it. Once you figure out how it works, you’ll absolutely love it!

See it here below:

Technology
New Service Allows Users To Select Coupons To Be Mailed To Cell Phones
August 15, 2007

There’s a new crop of services emerging that allow you to use your cell phone as a coupon.

There are two flavors: one like CellFire where you flip through and download coupons by browsing on your phone; the other, like 8coupons.com, a website where you browse coupons online just like you would in a newspaper, and decide which ones to “clip.”

“You can print them out if you wish to or you can click on that little phone icon and send it directly to your cell phone,” says Landy Ung of 8Coupons.com. “We have five categories, everything from restaurants to entertainment, spa, services. Right now our main focus is on local merchants, your mom and pop restaurants, dry cleaners, Joe’s Pizza. Once you send that coupon you want to that cell phone, you take it to the restaurant or store and show it to the cashier or server and show the coupon on your cell phone. That’s it.”

Both types of services were smart enough to realize they had to come up with something other than sending coupons as text messages, something most folks don’t really care for.

Just about every single person we spoke to, said they still view their cell phone as kind of sacred – they still don’t really get spam on their phones and they still don’t get calls from telemarketers on them, so they don’t want arbitrary text messages sent to their phones.

But if they could clips coupons and then send them to their phones, they would consider using the service.

“It costs money with text messages. Any time someone sends you a message it’s ten cents,” says one New Yorker, who was more positive about the idea of getting the coupon on a website and sending it to himself. “That would be an idea, yeah, that would get around cutting them up and carrying them around with you all the time.”

“I feel it’s a lot better, just to be able choose what you want to get on your cell phone rather than being bombarded by unwanted texts,” added another.

Services like CellFire work nationwide and have more coupons from big chains like Domino’s Pizza or Subway.

8Coupons.com is available in just five Big Apple neighborhoods right now, with plans to expand citywide by the end of the year, then to other metropolitan areas after that.

– Adam Balkin

8COUPONS.COM IS TAKING NYC SAVINGS MOBILE
8coupons.com Offers Deals in Manhattan via Text Messaging

New York, NY Aug 24, 2007 – 8coupons.com is a new website that allows New Yorkers to receive and redeem their local neighborhood deals as a text message on their cell phones. It’s a free service that promotes local merchants of New York City in the following neighborhoods: Chelsea, Tribeca/SoHo, Lower East Side, Greenwich/West Village and Union Square with plans to expand into other neighborhoods and boroughs.

To start the simple process, log on to www.8coupons.com and choose the coupon of your choice. Then enter your mobile number and the coupon will be sent directly to your phone within a matter of seconds. To utilize your savings, present the text message to the merchant at the check-out process to receive the discount or offer.

‘We are excited to empower local merchants with an online tool that they can use to promote their businesses, while at the same time, extending money-saving opportunities to local community residents,’ said 8coupons CEO Landy Ung. ‘And since text messaging has taken on such a huge roll in the mobile phone community, we wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to take advantage of these deals by simply redeeming them as mobile coupons!’ Other tools such as the website’s recently launched coupon widget, lets you get 8coupon’s latest deals right on your desktop or blog.

Ung also decided to make 8coupons a user driven site by allowing users to rate the deals which then helps determine the top 8 deals on the homepage. There are other interactive tools on 8coupons.com that give users the opportunity to openly discuss and provide comments and feedback such as a blog and an instant messaging application that lets you IM 8coupons team members at anytime. ‘We truly want to know what our users think and want from us,’ said Ung. ‘This information not only helps us improve 8coupons.com, but it also provides our merchant partners valuable information about their products and services.’

On September 8th, 8coupons will be kicking off their exclusive ‘Ocho Loco’ deals by sponsoring a launch party where they’ll be giving away $.08 gourmet burgers at the Twisted Burger located near Union Square in Manhattan. These “crazy 8” offers are outrageous, random deals that range anywhere from $.88 pedicures, to $.08 cocktails, to $8 entrées at participating local merchants. Ocho Loco events and offers are exclusive to members and for a limited time only. To get information on these Ocho Loco deals and events, log on to the 8coupons website, and sign up for the Ocho Loco Deals e-mail alerts.

Coupons include selections from Restaurants, Entertainment, Beauty/Spa, Services and Shopping. Local merchants include Slate NYC, Baluchi’s Indian Cuisine, Ocean Spa of New York, The Gotham City Improv, Earth NYC, September Wines & Spirits, and Café Fuego.

Burgner PR
Christie Burgner

646.747.4117
Christie@burgnerpr.com
www.burgnerpr.com

I forgot to provide the coupon after talking about Slate yesterday. Go eco-friendly dry cleaning!

So 8coupons.com has finally launched! An alpha launch only, but we’re live! Lots have happened since we’ve launched a little over a week ago on 8/8. Oh yes, by the way…we’re not at all superstitious for those of you who were curious. The number 8 just so happened to work out in our site design. OK, so we’re a little crazy about the 8. Thanks for all the great feedback, comments, and encouragement from our users and supporters! You have given us lots of love, and we love you for it! However …. we do have one request. We know a lot of New Yorkers out here in the East Village, Chelsea, TriBeCa, Lower East Side, West & Greenwich Village, and even Union Square have sent yourselves some of 8coupon’s mobile coupon deals. Can you give some feedback? What’d you think? How’d you like the ’send the deal to your cell phone’ feature? What happened when you showed them your mobile coupon? Did the business know about the offer with 8coupons? Was Café Fuego yummy? BTW…did you know that the guy who co-owns that restaurant is Halle Berry’s boyfriend?

Also, for those of you who don’t know, Café Fuego has a Buy One Get One Free Drink deal as well as a Free Appetizer deal

If you haven’t tried their Mojitos yet, we highly recommend it.

Today, we brought onboard probably one of our coolest local merchants – Slate NYC. No, not the pool hall in Chelsea, but the eco-friendly laundry & dry cleaning service in the