The site features deals in Washington, D.C., Boston and Philadelphia, with national deals slated to debut before the end of the year.

AOL says the local deals will get some real estate on the AOL homepage.

The “real deals for real people ” site, as AOL describes Wow.com, features discounts at Peacock Cafe and Vida Fitness in the nation’s capital, for example.

Trumpeting Wow.com, AOL says: “AOL is the newest entrant and first major media company to venture into the growing deal-of-the-day market.”

There’s another media company, Travelzoo, which recently entered the space in August 2010 with its Local Deals.

Travelzoo, with its sizable newsletter subscriber base, sees local deals as a signficant new business line.

In a recent regulatory filing, Travelzoo stated: “We compete with companies like Groupon and LivingSocial that also sell vouchers for deals from local businesses such as spas and restaurants.”

Travelzoo can now add AOL to the list.

Oh, and by the way, Travelzoo can also add Facebook, which recently began serving nearby Deals when users check into the social network from their smartphones.

Wow.

So, who’s the Groupon killer? No one probably, but you can list Facebook as a worthy potential suspect.

Is foursquare still breathing?

So far, so good.

Flash sales often blend into travel-oriented sales, including local tours, event tickets and hotel rooms.

And, the flash sales sector is exploding in growth — as AOL’s launch of Wow highlights.

A bold prediction?

One day deals sites may actually outnumber metasearch sites.

Who would have thunk it?

Simonseeks, AOL Travel, Lonely Planet, VisitBritain and Skyscanner are five of the high profile brands to take the new widget for their site, featuring Travelzoo-sourced travel deals relevant to the existing content.

The launch of Travelzoo Network in the UK (and expected around Europe over the coming months) follows a similar project introduced into the US and joins its existing newsletter service and on-site publishing of deals.

Travelzoo denies that the launch of an ad network indicates that it is reaching a saturation point in the number of potential subscribers to its existing – and successful – weekly newsletter product and needs to diversify.

The new network sees a 50-50 revenue share between Travelzoo and advertisers every time a user clicks on a link within the hosted site.

Existing advertisers are given an opt-out of the service.

Travel Network Europe vice president Melanie Bower says “very few” advertisers have asked to be removed from the system, although she admits that some smaller travel firms will watch how their allocated advertising budget holds up if clicks from the partner sites rapidly increase in volume.