Few public companies have experienced the type of roller coaster ride that Groupon has been on in such a short time. From darling to dud to darling and back to dud, the social buying site has been on the top of daily deals for a while but has been embroiled in controversy after controversy continuously. Their latest challenge: the Securities and Exchange Commission. Whenever the SEC gets involved, prospects for the future are often dim. In this graphic, we explore the sources and current status of the SEC probes. Via: Courtesy of: BackGroundCheck.org Related articles Groupon’s SEC troubles,…

The short answer is no. They will have an extremely successful IPO on launch day followed by volatility for a month. How they handle the volatility will determine how successful it will be long-term, but the first few months will be measured on “how” rather than “if it’ll be” successful. The longer answer is a bit more disconcerting and may make the long-term prospects for a Facebook IPO look something like what is happening with Groupon (pictured above). The fourth amendment to their S-1 filing with the SEC revealed some risks that many had speculated about but nobody knew for sure until Monday….

The SEC doesn’t get it. Most journalists don’t like it. It seems that everyone from Silicon Valley to Washington DC are down on Demand Media’s push to go public with a $125 million IPO. “From the very beginning, we set out to create an entirely different kind of media company,” reads Demand Media’s Manifesto. That, they’ve done, and as a result they’re mired in red tape as they try to make everyone understand that their “content farms” are not only potentially profitable but that the way they handle their accounting is exactly the way it should be. Demand has 17,000 freelancers supplying content…