Amazon.com acquires Woot.com

Ecommerce giant Amazon.com announced that it will be acquiring daily deal site Woot.com for an undisclosed sum, reports Internet Retailer magazine.

Amazon, which is ranked number 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, will be adding Woot to a number of websites it has recently acquired, including shoe outlet Zappos.com. The acquisition of Zappos cost Amazon a reported US$900 million, according to the source.

Woot.com - number 176 on the list - is a website that provides consumers with "flash sales," or single-day discounts on various items. The site, ChannelAdvisor online marketing services CEO Scot Wingo told Internet Retailer, "has a huge and loyal following."

The acquisition means that Amazon does not have build its own private daily deal website, but can still capitalise on a trend that consumers around the world are catching onto in the ecommerce world.

Woot founder and CEO Matt Rutledge says the company is "geeked" about the merger. "This is about making the Woot brand, culture, and business even stronger than it is today," he wrote on the Woot.com blog.

"We plan to continue to run Woot the way we have always run Woot," Rutledge assures the site's customers. "For Woot, our vision remains the same."