Photo by cstein96.

Since an email went out at 6:42 a.m., over 2,000 people have jumped on the pretty unbeatable deal offered by LivingSocial — a one-year Zipcar membership for $30, plus $30 in driving credit. I’ve already got a car, a bike and a Bikeshare membership — also purchased through LivingSocial — but you can be sure my wife and I jumped on this one. It’s hard to say no to a 75 percent discount on anything. (You’ve got until 5 a.m. tomorrow to join us.)

While the deal may be something of a hit to Zipcar’s bottom line (which has never been great), making money may not really be the point. Like many deals on LivingSocial and Groupon, customer loyalty is. For Zipcar, that loyalty may be even more important now that they won’t be the only game in town.

TBD’s John Hendel recently reported that Zipcar is losing its monopoly on car-sharing in the District, soon to be challenged by the likes of Hertz, Enterprise and Daimler. (Flexcar used to operate in the District, but it merged with Zipcar in 2007.) Moreover, Zipcar has gone from having all of the 84 curbside parking spots offered by the city to only having 12 of them, after a bidding process which saw the valuable spots go for $3,600 per year or more a pop, up from the $200 Zipcar had been paying.

Of course, Zipcar has something of a huge head start on the competition — 55,000 members so far in the District — but taking a preemptive shot at any pretenders with a deal sure to boost its membership rolls quickly seems wise.

But if that’s what ends up happening, it’s purely coincidental, according to Colleen McCormick, Zipcar’s spokesperson. She told DCist that the deal had been in the works with LivingSocial for months, and that it wasn’t exclusive to the District — it’s also running in other major North American markets such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Toronto. And though Washington trails New York by a few hundred new memberships as of this writing, we’re beating Chicago, Toronto and San Francisco combined.