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Groupon (GRPN) shares were under heavy pressure Friday morning -- at one point hitting an all-time low -- after the daily deals company reported another disappointing earnings quarter.

Shares of Chicago-based Groupon were falling 23.5% to $3 just after the start of trading. Earlier in the session, shares dropped as low as $2.95. Additionally, the percentage decline puts Groupon on track for the second-worst single-day drop in its short public history. According to FactSet data, the steepest decline in a single session was a 27% plunge on Aug. 14.

The stock has plunged 85% during its time on the market as investors have grown increasingly worried about the vitality of the company's business model.

Related: Web 2.0 Bust? Groupon's Early Investors Flee

Groupon generated $568.6 million in revenue last quarter, up 32% year-over-year, but falling short of the average analyst expectation of $591 million. It closed the third quarter with $25.4 million in

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Less than 24 hours after President Barack Obama won re-election, talk of the looming fiscal cliff -- i.e. the $600 billion in automatic tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect at the end of the year -- dominated the news coverage.

On Wednesday, U.S. markets fell more than 2% and have continued their downward trend. That same day, Fitch Ratings warned of a debt downgrade in 2013 if Congress fails to stop the cliff. Standard & Poor's already downgraded America's triple-A status last year after politicians battled over whether or not to raise the country's debt ceiling. On Friday, Obama invited congressional and business leaders to the White House to hold fiscal cliff talks next week.

"I'm not wedded to every detail of my plan. I'm open to compromise, I'm open to new ideas, I'm committed to solving our fiscal challenges, but I refuse to accept any approach that isn't balanced," Obama said in his first statement since he won the election on

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Earlier this week, Apple got a bunch of new patents approved, including one covering the "design" of the original iPad.

What does this "design" patent cover?

Mostly, it covers the fact that the iPad's "design" is a rectangle with rounded corners.

If there has been any recent patent that better reveals the absurdity of our current patent system, it's hard to imagine what it would be.

Related: Why Steve Jobs Was "Wrong" About the iPad Mini: Blodget

For the last few decades, the idea of tablet computers has often been discussed. Several companies created have prototypes. As far as I can remember, all of these prototypes were rectangles with rounded corners. (Do you remember a triangle-shaped one? Maybe a disk? Neither do I). Sharp corners, meanwhile, could potentially hurt consumers, so of course intelligent designers will round them.

But now Apple has been given a patent for the iPad design that includes its rectangular shape and rounded corners.