LIVINGSOCIAL LOOKING TO RAISE $1 BILLION IN IPO

Deal-of-the-day website LivingSocial Inc., which has courted bargain-hunting consumers for the past few years, is now looking to win over public investors.

LivingSocial has selected bankers for an IPO that seeks to raise $1 billion and value the online coupon website between $10 billion and $15 billion.

LivingSocial, which competes with larger rival Groupon Inc., is seeking to raise about $1 billion from an initial public offering, valuing the Web firm at between $10 billion and $15 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

LivingSocial will likely go public in the fall according to sources. A LivingSocial spokeswoman declined comment.

LEAK: NOKIA PERKS TO TAKE ON GROUPON, LIVINGSOCIAL, ETC.

If you're looking to score deals and discounts online you've got plenty of choices -- Groupon, LivingSocial, GiltCity, Google Offers -- and yet, Nokia seems to think the world needs one more such service. The sleuths over at ZOMGitsCj spotted a video on Vimeo from the struggling handset maker (since removed) introducing Nokia Perks. The premise is pretty simple -- pop over to perks.nokia.com (currently offline), browse for deals and coupons, and click save on any you care to cash in. The discounts you pick are automatically sent to your phone and, just like Groupon, all you need to do is show the barcode to the register jockey. As a nice added touch, Perks also pops up directions to the store in the mapping app.

BING TO TAKE ON GROUPON AND LIVINGSOCIAL

Microsoft's Bing has announced it will be launching Bing Daily Deals. Microsoft will be partnering with Dealmap to bring 200,000 deals from 14,000 cities throughout the United States to Bing's desktop and mobile versions.

On the mobile version of Bing, Bing Deals will be accessed through a dedicated “Deals” tab, while on the desktop, deals will be presented as a regular part of search results.

Unfortunately, you can’t specify the types of deals you’d like to receive, since all deals are based strictly upon location. However, what you lack in specificity, you make up for in volume, since Dealmap — upon which Bing Deals is based — is a huge aggregator of deals from other sites.