Yes. For me, a startup is a new business formed to discover a new product or business model. Then once they've found that, they enter a phase of very rapid scaling. I'm ok with calling those startups as well, as they're still very learning-focused. But once they have a reasonably stable product and revenue stream, I think it's a mistake to call them startups any more. Their values and behaviors become much more like typical companies.
LivingSocial is not a startup, it's just a company that isn't doing very well right now. It's not in a "growth period", in fact it's already gone through this kind of firing before.
In my opinion, at the point LivingSocial copied Groupon's business model, they weren't a startup anymore; before that they were a social app on Facebook.
