Hyperlocal Video Isn’t Ready for “Take-Out”
If you want to know where broadcast content is headed on location-aware devices, Scott Lindenbaum, co-founder and president of Broadcastr, suggests you look no further than your car dashboard: “There’s a reason car televisions never replaced car radios,” he said. “Video in motion is impractical and rather dangerous.” Audio worked because it worked on the go, in motion, allowing the user to remain focused on the present reality (the road) augmented by the content delivered over the radio…
Street Fight Daily: 05.12.11
Murphy USA, a gas station chain with 1,000 locations situated in the parking lots of Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, announced Wednesday that it’s offering $2 off a $20 purchase of gas with a Foursquare checkin. (Mashable)…
Gannett Co. is in the process of launching dozens of hyperlocal Web sites in 10 different markets, in a bold and risky initiative. DataSphere handles ad sales for Gannett’s hyperlocal sites, which are viewed as a growth medium because they provide smaller local businesses with an affordable, highly targeted ad platform. (NetNewsCheck)…
Yelp’s international sites have been growing like crazy, with non-U.S. traffic doubling in the past year….
Austin Bakeshop’s Groupons Reward Existing Customers, Entice Newbies
When newspaper and magazine ads failed to deliver the customers she’d hoped for, Olivia O’Neal turned to the web. As the co-owner of Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop, O’Neal has used group coupons and positive online reviews on sites like Yelp to help turn her from-scratch bakery into a dessert destination for foodies in Austin.
A ‘Vicinity Browser’ That Targets Local with the Power of Social
Once a novelty, “geobrowsing” apps have lately become a bit of a yawn. The products may be useful for navigating the hyperlocal landscape, but they haven’t proven compelling enough to hold consumer interest.
One new-ish product that that might bring geobrowsing back is Cynapse’s Localscope. The iPhone app, which was released in January, does what you might expect from a geo-centered service, gathering information about the area around you from multiple search engines and presenting it on a map. But rather than just focusing on technology or data depth, Localscope takes a lateral step into polishing design and UI to make an elegantly efficient experience…
Street Fight Daily: 05.11.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Groupon has just launched Groupon Now, the company’s much-anticipated time-based deals app that wants to redefine how society eats and shops. The simple application within Groupon’s mobile apps gives a user the ability to find local deals in realtime. (Mashable)…
Google has announced the opening up and general availability of the Google Places API. The service gives developers access to Google’s database of restaurants, bars, hotels and various other points of interest. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Empowering Local Restaurants Online
In 2011, pretty much every restauranteur knows that their business needs some sort of Web presence. They may just need a functional way to let people know their address and menu, or they may want a more sophisticated marketing outreach, but online is certainly part of the equation. The problem is that most restaurateurs aren’t versed in Web design, and many don’t know exactly what they should be doing online and why…
Street Fight Daily: 05.10.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Foursquare and Google are joining forces to enable a trial of Foursquare checkins via near field communication (NFC). The test starts Tuesday at Google I/O, the annual developer conference in San Francisco. (Mashable)…
LocalResponse takes the location data from other services and combines it with implicit location information, gathered from status updates, to create a marketing platform that lets companies target consumers wherever they are in real time. (GigaOm)…
Atlanta Chef Reaches Diners on as Many Platforms as Possible
When he’s not in the kitchen at one of Atlanta’s top steakhouses, McKendrick’s Steakhouse executive chef Thomas Minchella is busy managing his restaurant’s Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare accounts, along with his personal social media accounts and a company blog. He aims to keep his messages authentic and can’t stand it when celebrity chefs hire outside companies to do their tweeting for them…
Webster Says Patch Must ‘Be the Community,’ Others Weigh In
This is a the third installment in a series about hyperlocal past and present. Read here about Digital City / AOL, CitySearch, and Microsoft’s Sidewalk…
I reached out to Warren Webster, President of AOL’s Patch network, the day before their big multi-thousand-blogger launch for thoughts on some of the views of the “Local 1.0” set discussed in the previous posts in this series. In an email he said: “It’s important to note that Patch isn’t citizen journalism. Patch is a platform staffed by professional journalists with an average of nine years experience. Patch also offers many opportunities for members of the community to have a voice on this platform — and for SMBs to drive consumer actions.”..
Street Fight Daily: 05.09.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Groupon is preparing to launch Groupon Now, a mobile app that will connect customers with real-time coupons for retailers in their vicinity. Tap the app’s “I’m hungry” button, and you might be offered a discount on a slice at a pizza parlor a few blocks away. But you’ll have to move fast: The deals will be time-sensitive and good for just a few hours. (CNN/Money)…
Lauren Fisher writes that “2011 could be the year that the check-in arrives, albeit differently to how we thought it might look.” (The Next Web)…
How a ‘Geo-Contextual’ Ad Campaign Produces Results
Hyperlocal has become one of the most intriguing new ideas for retailers and national brands looking to reach specific markets. Some people ask what the difference is between “local” and “hyperlocal” from a media perspective. I think the difference is clear. Traditionally, “local” media has meant DMA or metro level content such as major metro newspaper Web sites. But they could cover a pretty vast geography. Conversely, “hyperlocal” means granular, community-based or zip-code-level content…
Put a Geofence Around Your Lunch
So for me, lunch at work has generally been one of three things – eating by myself and reading, eating with co-workers, or meeting up with friends. While often a brief interlude of joviality or solitude, lunch has rarely been functional. Being an efficiency oriented guy (far too much, according to my wife), I decided to try a new service I had read about on TechCrunch called Let’s Lunch. Basically, this is a derivative of the old “It’s Just Lunch” couple matching service favored by urban office dwellers who prefer to see their date in broad daylight before a undertaking a nocturnal mission. Rather, Let’s Lunch is focused on bringing people together to meet for networking purposes…
Street Fight Daily: 05.06.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
AOL’s Tim Armstrong just keeps piling his chips higher and higher on his Patch bet, but the odds of winning continue to be extremely slim, writes Matthew Ingram. (GigaOm)…
Google’s Marissa Mayer — who took charge of Google’s Location Services division in October — yesterday described Business Photos, a new product that will take Google Maps indoors. She also spoke with Jason Kincaid about the problems facing Google Latitude, and how Google Places is going to differentiate itself from Yelp in the future. (Paid Content, TechCrunch)…
Hyperlocal 1.0: Matt Kursh Remembers Microsoft’s Sidewalk
A serious contender and moneyed innovator, Microsoft Sidewalk took to the local Web the way the behemoth did most things: with lots of muscle. It quickly squared off with CitySearch over advertising share and rapidly expanded its editorial footprint across the nation – carrying itself with arguably the most style among the hyperlocal contenders.
The Merging of Location and Daily Deals = Possible Success
The single-best deal, assertion, investment or other strategy of the week...
Who: Beyond and Social-Loco…
Why: For digging into the data behind check-ins.
There is an opportunity for big brands to engage consumers in location-based apps by tapping into and combing multiple motivations (discounts, learning, promoting, meeting friends). To reach beyond the early adopters, brands should focus their strategies around Facebook and Groupon as the two platforms that will most likely drive adoption. —David Hargreaves, CEO, Beyond
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Salon Owner Courts a Niche Market of Eco-Friendly Customers
Aurora Marks isn’t a fan of mass-market coupon sites. As the co-owner of Salon Botanique Eco-Chic, an organic hair salon and spa in Morristown, New Jersey, she says she focuses on reaching customers who care more about getting the best quality hair and skin products than about getting a bargain basement price.
Ex-CitySearch Chief Conn on Hyperlocal 1.0
This is a the second installment in a series about hyperlocal past and present… An early entrant to the hyperlocal game was the fast-moving (and still going) CitySearch. They focused on data-driven content about entertainment and “things to do,” further crafted by editors in cities around the country. CitySearch went head-to-head with Digital City but saw real competition in Microsoft’s Sidewalk, which they eventually bought. Former CitySearch chief Charles Conn looks back and tells us a little bit about the way it was…
What’s the Right Ratio of Editors to Contributors in Hyperlocal?
What is the right ratio for the number of editors required to manage a number of contributors? And as the economics of content change and hyperlocal publishers try new models, should that ratio change? Must it change?