Street Fight Daily: Facebook Threatens Yelp, Locu Expands

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.

displaymediaWatch Out Foursquare And Yelp: ‘Places’ Really Shines On Facebook Graph Search (TechCrunch)
Facebook has unveiled a massive new product called “Graph Search” at a press event at its Menlo Park, California headquarters. While the impact of this debut will be settling in for a while, one thing seems clear: Facebook is about to be much, much better for finding places such as restaurants, cafes, bars and the like.

Patch has Grown Up ‘Enormously,’ Says Webster (Street Fight)
In a fireside chat with Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici at the Street Fight Summit on Tuesday, Patch’s co-founder and president, Warren Webster, defended his closely watched hyperlocal network, denying reports that the AOL property was struggling to sustain its rapid growth.

Locu Brings Up-To-Date Menus to Restaurants on TripAdvisor and Citysearch (The Next Web)
TripAdvisor and Citysearch are the latest online companies to tap Locu to bring real-time menus, deals, wine lists and more, to their Web and mobile users. With the likes of TripAdvisor now incorporating menus from Locu, this helps join the dots between would-be diners and the restaurants they are actively researching on the site.

PayPal’s Walt Doyle on Navigating the “Purchase Pretzel” (Street Fight)
During his morning keynote at the Street Fight Summit onTuesday, Walt Doyle, GM of Paypal Media Network, took a deep dive into eBay’s $3 billion push into local, demonstrating both the opportunities and the frustrations of that space.

JiWire Serves Up Location-based Ads Over Airport Wi-Fi (GigaOm)
As consumers become increasingly reluctant to pay for Wi-Fi in public spaces, hotspot providers are looking for other ways to monetize wireless connections. Airport Wi-Fi provider AWG is working with location-based ad company JiWire to trade access for advertising views.

Making Hyperlocal Media Work (Street Fight)
Amid a body-strewn battlefield on which even the smartest media companies have fallen, some founders of post-2009 hyperlocal start-ups discussed ways to beat the curse during a panel discussion at the Street Fight Summit in New York City.

PayPal Strikes a Deal With In-store Tech Company NCR (CNET)
eBay’s payment division PayPal will soon add deeper integration with retailers into its digital wallet that will result in a richer shopping experiences from consumers’ phones thanks in part to a new partnership with point of sale company NCR. The companies are teaming up to bring PayPal’s digital wallet app into stores that are already using NCR’s self-service and promotion management technologies in their retail locations.

Local Commerce Shifts Toward Retention (Street Fight)
As deals firms lick their wounds, leaders from the local commerce space agreed during a morning panel discussion at Street Fight Summit in New York that the ecosystem has shifted focus from acquisition to retention.

The Loopt Acquisition Bears Some Fruit: Green Dot Launches GoBank, A Mobile Bank Account (TechCrunch)
Green Dot, a Sequoia-backed company that focuses on pre-paid debit cards and eventually went public two years ago, just unveiled a new banking account that can be registered entirely from a smartphone. The team that came from the $43.3 million acquisition of location-based social network Loopt was behind the product, called GoBank.

Monetizing Location – Native or Display? (Street Fight)
During a panel at the Street Fight Summit in New York, executives from Pandora, Foursquare and Verve Wireless explored monetizing location on mobile, hitting on key issues like native advertising, the display ecosystem, and reaching brands.

In Chicago, Too Much Hyperlocal Competition? (Media Nation)
Dan Kennedy: What stands out after reading Mike Fourcher’s ruminations on what he learned running the Center Square Journal is that he simply faced too much competition for advertisers and readers. And that, in turn, was a consequence of his making an unfortunate choice of location.

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