Street Fight Daily: 08.23.11

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.

Placecast’s ShopAlerts service, which delivers retailer and merchant offers and discounts to consumers via their mobile phones, has announced its integration with mobile smartphone apps.  (TechCrunch)

With millions of Americans carrying GPS-enabled smartphones around all day, mobile marketers dream of using their locations to serve them targeted ads. But recent studies show that consumers and advertisers aren’t yet ready for location-based advertising to take over our touchscreens. (Poynter)

While Skype’s GroupMe deal obviously revolved around messaging and communications, a big motivator was also GroupMe’s shot at going back to its original potential as a tool for making monetized group decisions. This seems to tie into the growing market for delivering local discounts and offers to consumers via their mobile device. (GigaOm)

Groupon’s Chilean arm is featuring goods like kerosene stoves, kitchen robots and even motorcycles at discounts ranging from 40% to 50% off the retail price. This isn’t the first time Groupon has put tangible products up for discounted sale, but it’s definitely the first time we’ve noticed a dedicated “products” (or “goods”) section on any Groupon site. (TechCrunch)

Matt Galligan, co-founder and most recently Chief Strategy Officer of SimpleGeo, has left the company. (ReadWriteWeb)

Gilt has added ecommerce functionality to its Facebook Pages, giving fans early — and in some cases, exclusive — access to a range of merchandise across Gilt’s categories for women, men, children and home. (Mashable)

Loopt users have answered 50,000 Loopt Qs (community micro-reviews) about the places around them. Loopt prompts interesting/funny/useful responses from its users with Qs tailored to each place (or type of place). (Loopt Blog)

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