Gowalla’s Josh Williams: Groupon Is One-Dimensional
Location-based check-in service Gowalla is kind of a virtual tour guide, to use the analogy of the day for such companies. Mobile users log in with their location and get information about the places around them, nearby businesses and places their friends recommend. Gowalla integrates both Facebook Places and Foursquare check-ins, and lets users share photographs tagged to places.
Street Fight spoke to the company’s CEO, Josh Williams, who called Groupon “one-dimensional” for now, and discussed the scramble for local ad dollars, the inseparability of mobile and location, and the persistent privacy problem around check-ins...
Street Fight Daily: 04.13.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… Arianna Huffington says that AOL will hire as many as 800 full-time employees at its Patch sites across the country, reducing the use of freelancers and beefing up local content. (Bloomberg)… Will 2011 be “the year the check-in died?” Mark Watkins thinks services like Foursquare, Loopt, and Gowalla need to find a way to deliver deep value to people beyond the check-in. (ReadWriteWeb)… Google has decided to take its Google Latitude Check-In offers nationwide. The service allows users share locations on a map, rewarding frequent users with exclusive discounts. (Daily Deal Media)…
Roger Smith Hotel: Social Media Beats Location-Based, for Now
If you’ve been to the Roger Smith Hotel in Manhattan, you know it’s hip. And it’s the same online. The “Twitter hotel,” as it’s known, has developed a cult following online thanks to social media maven Adam Wallace, director of digital marketing. Wallace recently spoke to Street Fight for its series of conversations with local businesses.…
Street Fight Launches Hyperlocal Industry Site
Groupon has surprised many in the past couple of years, coming out of nowhere with a simple idea to become first a $6 billion acquisition target and then potential $25 billion IPO (if it ever pulls the trigger). Foursquare was once just a schoolyard game, but now it has a potential $1 billion valuation as a market-leading innovator in “check-in” markets. And the Patch.com network of sites emerged as an itch in need of a good scratch when AOL’s now-CEO Tim Armstrong perceived a dearth of local news in his Connecticut town — it’s now in over 800 towns and neighborhoods around the country…
Street Fight Daily: 04.12.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Patch’s local news module widget is hardly a new idea, but it’s one that few local newspaper companies have made work, despite the economy of its potential costs and benefits. Will Patch leapfrog newspaper sites with this old-is-new innovation? (Newsonomics)…
Twitter’s Local Trends feature has now expanded to 70 more places. This seems likely to foreshadow a future when advertisers will be able to purchase trending topics on a local level. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Four unsolicited lessons that Groupon’s Andrew Mason should take from what Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg just did in China. (Forbes)…
Street Fight Daily: 04.11.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… It makes sense for Groupon to move beyond vouchers, given indications that just 20% of customers using Groupons return to a retailer for a second, nondiscounted visit. That’s a steep price to pay when selling a service for 75% off or more after commission. (Forbes)… Although location-based services are still in the early stages, they appear to be having an influence that is similar to the one that social media has had. (WebProNews)… Google said it has added check-in deals nationally to its location-based service. Companies participating in the service at launch include American Eagle Outfitters, Quizno’s, Macy’s and RadioShack. (DM News)…
Patch’s Political Potential
The single-best deal, assertion, investment or other strategy of the week.
Who: Arianna Huffington
Why: Because she just might have struck upon a way to make hyperlocal blogs super relevant and essential to every single American: Make Patch a front-line source for news on the next election.
We’re launching over 30 new Patches in primary states. I want to know how the government shutdown will effect people at the local level. —Arianna Huffington, April 7, 2011…
Street Fight Daily: 04.08.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… Google Latitude, the search giant’s location-sharing mobile app, is launching check-in offers nationwide, giving users the ability to unlock discounts with a handful of launch partners. (Mashable)… Arianna Huffington says that Patch will be key to HuffPo’s coverage of the 2012 presidential election. “We’re launching over 30 new patches in primary states,” she said. (THR)… Yahoo has beefed up its local coverage, adding to its staff of local editors and aggregating local news, deals, and events in specific neighborhoods and cities on Yahoo Local. (PaidContent)
Street Fight Daily: 04.07.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Examiner.com CEO Rick Blair doesn’t like the implication that his network of hyperlocal sites is effectively a “content mill.” He describes “examiners” as specialists in old-school and new media reporting with a local flair. (Mediabistro)…
Groupon is taking another move beyond its core deal-of-the-day business with the launch of home and garden deals. This, like its recent location-based changes, are part of a broader strategy to better match offers to specific interests of its subscribers. (Crain’s Chicago Business)…
“We are entering what might be called Hyperlocal 2.0, and the market is still up for grabs,” writes Tom Rosenstiel. “But how to produce local content remains a mystery.” (Washington Post)…
Meet the Father of Group Messaging – Upoc
Cynics say everything is derivative. The ignorant never know the difference.
But sometimes it’s worth looking back at what came before, if only to illuminate history for those who simply don’t know, but should.
Case in point: What’s hotter in tech than ‘group messaging’ in all it’s unvaried forms? (Forget group buying a minute.) Answer: not much. GroupMe, groupflier, Beluga, Fast Society, Kik, even Google. These are some of the players lately giving users the ability to communicate over their phones, via text, to many people in one shot. Another popular use is collecting your friends into groups, much like an email list – situational text communities if you will…
Street Fight Daily: 04.06.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Hyperlocal network Examiner.com has often been frustrated by being lumped in with the so-called “content farms.” So, over the past year, it’s instituted a process to shore up the quality of its posts and contributors. (Paid Content)…
As developers build rich layers of information atop location data, our understanding of the world is changing. Foursquare is the tip of the iceberg. The new wave of hyperlocal data is surging, writes Shane Snow. (Mashable)…
The “Top 6″ local online companies in ad revenue have abundant local content — but none of it is news. Instead, the ads and associated shopping information are the content. (Poynter)…
Street Fight Daily: 04.05.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Living Social says it expects $1 billion in revenue this year. The company has also quietly raised $400 million in funding to catch up with Groupon. (Business Insider)…
Back in June of 2009, then-new CEO Tim Armstrong made two acquisitions to move AOL into the local space: Patch and Going. While the verdict is still very much out on Patch, it’s clear that AOL is at least committed to it. Going? Not so much. (TechCrunch)…
Can the Groupon model save newspapers? Earl Wilkinson notes that the company is the number one search term on his newspaper association site, and gives a rundown of the stats. (INMA)…
Street Fight Daily: 04.04.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Craigslist, long blamed as the killer of newspaper classifieds (and, by extension, local news), may have jumped the shark. (Business Insider)…
Daily deal sites, most notably Groupon, are taking over the landscape that once belonged to the local newspapers. Whether those newspapers that survive can reinvent themselves is yet to be seen. (Daily Deal Media)…
Gowalla says it will double the size of its operations this year and reshaping itself as a “social Lonely Planet.” (Independent)…
Journal Register’s Brady Hire
The single-best deal, assertion, investment or other strategy of the week.
Who: John Paton and the Journal Register Company
Why: Because they made up their own minds about TBD’s demise – that Allbritton simply gave up too early – and hired its founder and general manager Jim Brady to head up “digital transformation” in a project called “Project Thunderdome.” There’s often a significant waiting period before a fired figure’s taint wears off. Journal Register didn’t need it…
Street Fight Daily: 04.01.11
What’s happening around media, technology, advertising and startups in hyperlocal, every week day.…
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has acquired Larchmont, New York-based hyperlocal network theLoop for an undisclosed sum.“Hyperlocal news is a trend in news consumption that’s here to stay,” said a well-placed News Corp. executive. (theLoop)…
Walgreens is the first retailer to try a major national Foursquare promotion. Most of the retail chain’s 7,600 locations are now offering store patrons who check in on the geo-social platform 15 percent off eligible items and 20 percent off Walgreens-branded products. (Clickz)…
Location-based services will be so all-pervasive by 2014, experts believe, that it will be possible to locate every one of us every second of every day. But has the law caught up to technology? (Guardian)…