Smack Shopping gets Smacked from Microsoft

Smack Shopping, which is a part of Jellyfish, which ended up being scooped up by Microsoft, is sadly shutting its doors down as of February 16. As reported by TechCrunch, we would agree that it’s a surprising move for several reasons:
a) it’s backed by Microsoft, a company certainly not short on funds by any means
b) in the downtrodden economy where consumers are constantly looking for cheap deals one would think sites like these would gain in popularity
c) Microsoft has continuously tried to break into social media–e.g. its investment in Facebook–which Smack Shopping was relatively successful at doing.They even have a Facebook fan page.

Perhaps they’re simply narrowing their focus onto its Cashback platform, which to the surprise of quite a few, has been successful for merchants who list their products on there via a cost per acquisition model.

In any case, many frugal shoppers (not to be confused with Froogle) will miss the Smack Shopping model, and hopefully similar sites such as a Woot do not follow suit any time soon.