There’s no question that voucher codes have long been a valued means of saving money for a wide range of people around the world, whether they are struggling to make ends meet or simply love to save money on essentials and luxuries alike. Nonetheless, with SRK Com having recently launched its own @YumGo tweet-2-discount service, making use of the open source technology offered by Twitter, it seems an appropriate time to assess the state of play in the market, as well as one of its key questions: has the voucher codes industry become overcrowded?

At first inspection, it certainly appears that those who are looking for the latest online offers have no shortage of choice. On the one hand, there are the location based services from top players that take advantage of the huge numbers of people who access the Internet through mobile phones and tablets in search of the latest local offers. These include Google Offers and Google Wallet, with the latter being a mobile application that makes use of Near Field Communications (NFC) technology to enable users to conveniently pay for goods using their phone. Other such services include Facebook Deals and Foursquare Deals, which reward customers who check in at a vendor’s place of business.

Other sources of offers include technology and affiliate network players such as myvouchercodes.co.uk, vouchercodes.co.uk and moneysupermarket.com. Then, there are the rapidly growing daily deal providers to consider, such as Groupon and Living Social. Indeed, the overall voucher codes market is now worth some $4.5bn, having grown by 155%. As a matter of fact, with the present economic climate leaving more people than ever in need of a effective means of saving money for a wide range of goods and services, it only looks set to continue its exponential growth.

Now, all of this competition would at first seem to place @YumGo in a difficult position. Nonetheless, whilst the market is certainly competitive, it is also close, and given the way that Twitter appears to be overpowering other social mediums, it seems that a small startup such as @YumGo may yet emerge a winner in this most hotly contested of races