Street Fight Daily: Yelp Bulls Get Bearish, Google Wants More Wallet
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Yelp Traders Brace for Lockup Expiration; ‘Better to Be Safe Than Sorry’ (Wall Street Journal)
Bearish positioning in options on the business-review website outpaced bullish positioning for the first time in the stock’s short history on Monday. That came as anticipation built ahead of Wednesday, the day of Yelp’s “lockup” expiration, or the lifting of rules that bar insiders from selling shares into the market.
Google Wallet Aspires To Hold All Your Cards and Tickets (GigaOm)
Google is talking up the potential for Google Wallet to be more than just a payment tool. Leaders want Google Wallet to be a place to store boarding passes, tickets, identification and gift cards. That was the vision all along but it may be ready soon.
How The Web ‘Check In’ Is Growing Up (Forbes)
Eric Koester, Zaarly COO: I’ll be straight up: I’ve turned bullish on the check-in. Now, I’m not a ‘checker-in-er,’ but I think I’ve finally come around to recognize the real power of location is from the combination of location, history and social context.
Daily Deal Biz Model Still Viable Despite Upheavals (ZDNet)
A raft of exits from the group buying industry signals consolidation as operators refine their offerings and improve service standards for retailers and consumers, which should bode well for the overall market.
Half of All Mobile Phones Will Be Smartphones by 2013, Two Years Earlier Than Forecast (AllThingsD)
A new report from IHS says that smartphones will account for half the market in 2013, two years earlier than the firm had earlier predicted. Smartphones will already be more plentiful than feature phones this year, IHS says, though they won’t quite pass the 50 percent threshold – that’s up from just 35 percent of the worldwide market last year.
What Ails Groupon, Yahoo, and Facebook: “Demand Generation” Advertising (PandoDaily)
Groupon, Facebook, and Yahoo all share something in common: they monetize their users via “Demand Generation” advertising which, as the name implies, is when the advertiser pushes a product or a service offering at the user in order to create demand. The problem is that Demand Generation is not a viable format for building a profitable business on the Internet, and is in secular but permanent decline.
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