Street Fight Daily: 09.22.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
Ad sales chief Scott Colontonio is leaving AOL’s hyperlocal network Patch after little over a year to join Google. Meanwhile, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong reiterated his assertion that some Patch outposts would be profitable by the end of the year. (PaidContent)…
LivingSocial may raise more than $200 million in funding that would give it a valuation of as much as $6 billion, rather than proceeding toward an initial public offering. (Bloomberg)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.21.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Foursquare has just hit one billion checkins. The app had gone from 100 million checkins in July, 2010 to 200 million in Oct 2010 to 750 million checkins in June 2011. Along with the milestone, Foursquare has launched a new version of its app. (TechCrunch)…
HipGeo, a location based social network backed by CitySearch and eHarmony execs, has launched an iPhone app that tracks your travels, then stitches together your photos, comments and pinned locations into an animated diary of each day. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.20.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Amazon Local, the e-retail giant’s recently launched daily deals initiative, apparently does not count the space’s no. 2 player — LivingSocial — as a true competitor. LivingSocial, which received $175 million in funding from Amazon last December, is selling the majority of the ads for Amazon Local — a platform that’s been dramatically expanded in the last seven weeks and now appears in 44 markets. (Clickz)…
Success breeds nothing if not copycats, and few industries have seen more imitators in the last 12 months than the daily deals space. But companies looking for hefty exits might be sobered by a new report on the deals space that notes the price of acquisitions has been plummeting. (Fast Company)…
Case Study: For Seattle Video Store, Print is Still King
Remaining relevant is a challenge for any independent video store that has to compete with subscription-based companies like Netflix. Next Door Media, an ad network of hyperlocal sites, took on that challenge with Scarecrow Video in Seattle, adding its sites to the store’s traditional mix of weekly newspapers, free magazines, and public radio stations…
Why the Merchant API Is Key to Foursquare’s Future
Last week, Foursquare updated its business page, adding case studies for merchants and use studies for brands, and generally improving the user experience. Since updating its merchant platform in the spring, the location-based social networking company has quietly launched an offensive to create a viable B2B component in their business, laying the groundwork for future monetization…
Sonar CEO: ‘Location Is Reaching an Inflection Point’
“We spent the last five years uploading our lives to the Internet – our likes, preferences, activities and so on,” says Brett Martin. “Now, we are downloading that information and spreading it over the suitable world. So there is a gold rush of applications which are working to help navigate that data in a physical context.”
Street Fight Daily: 09.19.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
The online business of serving up daily deals has attracted millions of dollars in venture capital and spurred dozens of clones of market leaders Groupon Inc. and LivingSocial Inc. Now the industry is starting to shake out. (Wall Street Journal)…
“The national and regional coverage of Hurricane Irene was fine before the storm actually passed through my suburban New Jersey town. But then, what I wanted — and needed — to know came from my local AOL Patch site,” writes Harry Jessell. “The lesson here for broadcasters dabbling in hyperlocal websites or mobile apps is that you can’t do it on the cheap.” (TVNewsCheck)…
TownHog Deal Speaks Volumes About VC-Backed Deal Startups
BuyWithMe has been looking to scale to catch up with Groupon and LivingSocial, and this is its sixth acquisition this year. TownHog, which has a strong footprint in the Bay Area, where it was started, is a nice feather in their cap.
But TownHog was backed by some serious hitters. As TechCrunch noted, “The company…was backed by a host of star investors (Jawed Karim of YouTube fame and Kevin Hartz of Xoom / Eventbrite to name but a few)…”
Twitter Local: @MarissaMayer, @LisaWilliams, @PerryEvans, @RobCurley and more…
This week on Twitter, Rob Curley notes that “innovative” doesn’t always drive readership; Closely’s Perry Evans calls Zagat “an aggregation model and methodology,” and Grapphic’s Michael Fives rolls his eyes at TechCrunch, AOL and HuffPo: It’s “like watching a bunch of spoiled children misbehave.” Read more from the hyperlocal twitterverse.
Street Fight Daily: 09.16.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
According to Amazon, their Groupon-esque deals service will start displaying bargains on their Special Offer-oriented Kindles when a new software update goes live in coming weeks. (TechCrunch)…
AOL looks like it may be readying a new social network. It’s clear AOL is going for a more localized approach. And what does AOL already own that could be easily integrated with a localized social networking platform? Patch. (Business Insider)…
Are Big Media’s Partnerships With Seattle ‘Indies’ the Future of Hyperlocal?
In the furiously expanding, highly competitive and often conflicted hyperlocal space, some pieces appear to be coming together. Just possibly, highly digital Seattle may be the birthplace for what has long eluded hyperlocal: a sustainable business model.
I’m talking about the new partnerships between Fisher Interactive Network—the online division of multimedia Fisher Communications—and two hyperlocal “indies” in Southeast Seattle, Beacon Hill Blog and the Rainier Valley Post…
Street Fight Daily: 09.15.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Groupon is planning to put its initial public offering back on track even as markets remain rocky. After postponing presentations to potential investors early this month, the online coupon giant is now aiming to go public in late October or early November, according to people briefed on the matter. (New York Times/Dealbook)…
Foursquare’s magical tool that will allow developers to build apps that can remind you to buy milk when you walk past the grocery store or notify you when a friend is in the area is being publicly released. (BetaBeat)…
Where a Yahoo-AOL Merger Would Leave Patch
Rumors surfaced again last week that AOL and Yahoo were in talks to merge. Where would such a move leave Patch? Or Yahoo’s own local efforts? It all makes for compelling drama for sure, but one area likely to ‘pop’ in both categories is ‘local’ — i.e. Patch, Yahoo’s ‘Neighbors’ beta product, and a litany of other products on each side that are heavily reliant on local advertisers and audiences…
Street Fight Daily: 09.14.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman claims that a 54% traffic growth this year has led the service to 63 million monthly unique visits. 21 million reviews grace the site and the app, and 1 million are being added every 30 days. He also calls Google’s acquisition of Zagat “a funny move. (The Next Web)…
Groupon’s Chinese joint venture Gaopeng is not doing so well. It has apparently closed 10 offices and fired at as many as 400 employees over the past three months. (ReadWriteWeb)…
What Hyperlocal Startups Can Learn From Mary Kay
What comes to mind when you hear the name Mary Kay? A yellow-tinged business model from the Tupperware era for “housewives” looking to make a little extra money? Maybe so, but if you’re looking to succeed in “local,” you ignore the wildly successful local mid-brow tastemaker at your peril…