Street Fight Daily: Verifone CEO Out, Passbook Still Disappoints
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
VeriFone’s Bergeron Out After Outlook Misses Estimates (BloombergBusinessweek)
VeriFone Systems shares rose after Douglas Bergeron was dismissed as chief executive officer, following missed estimates for second-quarter profit amid diminished demand for credit-card terminals. VeriFone, which makes makes credit and debit-card accepting terminals that are used in retail stores, gas stations and taxicabs, is facing new competition from a new generation of companies.
Overlaying Local: Do We Want Listings in Context? (Street Fight)
Maponics is working on an initiative that includes overlays of demographics and what they call “lifestyle data” on top of maps. The idea is to create a value-added component to traditional maps that may help to bring primary mapping information into a meaningful context for users.
iPhone Passbook: Six Months On and It Still Disappoints (ZDNet)
Passbook marked a significant, and potentially disruptive, addition to iOS, but six months on from its launch, the iPhone’s digital wallet is yet to generate any significant momentum. As well as reducing the clutter of plastic cards in your wallet, Passbook is also widely seen as Apple’s first step towards turning the iPhone into a payments mechanism – a potentially enormously lucrative, though still nascent, market.
Why Redbeacon Founder Ethan Anderson Returned to Local (Street Fight)
A little over a year after selling Redbeacon to Home Depot, the company’s founder is back on the scene with a new startup, MyTime. Street Fight recently caught up with Anderson to talk about life after Redbeacon, building a local marketplace, and finding a seam in a cluttered hyperlocal space.
Google Concedes That Drive-by Prying Violated Privacy (New York Times)
Google on Tuesday acknowledged to state officials that it had violated people’s privacy during its Street View mapping project when it casually scooped up passwords, e-mail and other personal information from unsuspecting computer users. While the settlement also included a tiny — for Google — fine of $7 million, privacy advocates and Google critics characterized the overall agreement as a breakthrough for a company they say has become a serial violator of privacy.
The SMB ‘State of the Union’ (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: Data coming out of vSplash adds more evidence to the argument that most SMBs are hopelessly behind when it comes to digital marketing. Today the company released some new statistics, based on an “audit” of 3.9 million SMB websites. The short version of what vSplash says is: SMB sites are lame, they’re not mobile optimized and they don’t take advantage of social.
The Biggest Problem With Same-Day Shipping: It’s Not Fast Enough (VentureBeat)
For Amazon, eBay, and, most recently, Google, the solution for impatient, lazy people like me is simple — same-day shipping. But while same-day shipping is pretty fast by current standards, it’s still not fast enough for Tom Allason, the CEO of same-hour shipping service Shutl.
Five Location-Based Social Ad Strategies For Brands (Media Post)
When consumers assign a location to their public social activity, by checking in on an app or adding a location to their social media updates, they have provided you — the marketer — with valuable real-time insights. They are letting you know where they are, what they like, and to a certain extent, what they’re doing. If you use these insights to develop and deliver ads that are relevant to their interests, you may win more first-time customers and increase repeat-visit loyalty.
500friends Raises $5M To Bring Its Online Loyalty Programs To Physical Stores (TechCrunch)
500friends, a Y Combinator-incubated startup that helps retailers manage their customer loyalty programs, is announcing that it has raised $5 million in Series B funding. The company is working to bring the capabilities, which it has built for e-commerce operations, to physical stores.
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