Savings.com Makes Coupons More Social; Jason Calacanis Joins Board

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Coupon site Savings.com just got a redesign and a new board member: Mahalo CEO (and TechCrunch50 co-host) Jason Calacanis. “They’ve broken $10 million in revenue after just a couple of years,” says Calacanis, “and are crushing it in the deals space. Obviously this is a great place to be in a recession.”

The redesign is aimed at making the site more social for those virtual coupon clippers (hey, don’t laugh, we should all be trying to save more money these days) who want to just live to tell everyone they know about the great deals they found.

The site offers coupons from about 3,400 merchants, including the Gap, Restoration Hardware, and even the San Diego Zoo. The site is basically a coupon search engine, organized by brands, stores, and shopping categories. The new design is much more social—as far as a coupon site can be social. Each deal can be voted up, commented on, or shared (via Twitter, Facebook, Digg, reddit, delicious, or email). And members can submit their own deals.

Hardcore members and get reputation points based on how many coupons they vote on, how many they add, and whether or not the ones they add become popular.

There are tons of coupon sites out there, such as RetailMeNot and CouponChief. CEO Loren Bendele says he is trying to stand out from the crowd by creating a good user experience so that people stick around and want to come back instead of just keeping up bad deals or expired coupons which draw SEO traffic but little else.

Bendele expects to pull in more than $10 million in revenues this year and drive more than $200 million in sales for participating merchants. That is not a bad little business. (The company has raised $6 million in venture and angel capital, most recently in October, 2008 from US Venture Partners.