Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Co-Founder Departs, NextDoor Hits 10K Neighborhoods
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
LivingSocial CTO and Co-Founder Departs Company (AllThingsD)
Aaron Batalion, chief technical officer of the social deals site LivingSocial, will leave the company, he announced Friday on his personal blog. Batalion co-founded LivingSocial in 2007 with partners Tim O’Shaughnessy, Eddie Frederick and Val Aleksenko, and has been on board ever since.
6 Marketplace Platforms for Local Buyers (Street Fight)
Limited-time promotions are an effective way to generate immediate customer demand, but what happens once the hype is over and the deal is complete? To counteract their one-and-done reputations and give merchants a way to extend their promotions, a number of hyperlocal companies are developing local marketplace platforms with more opportunities for long-tail marketing.
Nextdoor Hits 10K Neighborhoods, Gets Me To Stop Running At Night (TechCrunch)
Alexis Tsotsis: Nextdoor has grown from 3,000 to 10,000 neighborhoods since July, hitting the 10K milestone just last week. While the founders wouldn’t give me exact DAUs or MAUs, one could do back-of-the-napkin math and assume there’s somewhere in the neighborhood of over 1 million households signed up for the platform. Over three-fourths of its members are active, either opening an email message, posting or visiting the site at least once a week.
Can Local Media Find New Opportunities by Catering to Brands? (Street Fight)
Patrick Kitano: “Journalism is Dead, Long Live Journalism” is the theme of a conference I’ll be attending this week in Denver. And the name isn’t a surprising one — there’s been a lot of angst lately about the emerging business models for digital journalism. Futility can be difficult, but it also can bring sea change. With that in mind, here are a few of the ideas I’ll likely be discussing with folks at the conference.
Solving the Hyperlocal Puzzle (American Journalism Review)
Through his New Media News, the 71-year-old Joe Ricketts launched DNAinfo.com, two hyperlocal sites staffed with dozens of reporters who cover every nook and many of the crannies in the neighborhoods of New York and Chicago. If DNAinfo.com can make it there, Ricketts & Co. believe, it can make it anywhere.
Foursquare’s API Is A Pillar Of The Mobile App Ecosystem (TechCrunch)
Jonathan Barouch: Foursquare has become entrenched in the fabric of the local web, providing an API that delivers common good for developers. Any destabilization in Foursquare or its developer tools would fundamentally affect the stability of the mobile web. With so many companies dependent on Foursquare’s location data, a lot of people are hoping that they work it out — and fast.
Apple + WiFiSLAM = Game on for Indoor Location (Forbes)
Tony Cosata: Apple’s acquisition of WiFiSLAM fills a critical gap in Apple’s location and mapping offering, better positioning it to take on Google and Nokia’s extensive indoor location offerings. The acquisition is poised to act as a catalyst – as Apple’s entry into emerging markets so often does – that will ignite a new wave of innovative apps and solutions based on indoor location.
Groupon Revisited: New Mission, New Reporting Issues (Grumpy Old Accountants)
Anthony Catanach Jr.: Despite the declines in gross profit percentage, income from operations has turned positive for the first time primarily due to reduced marketing expenses. The dramatic reversals in marketing and SGA expenses may reflect the Company’s changing business model, but given Groupon’s past reporting issues, one wonders if some of this expense volatility is due to the aforementioned decision to reclassify financial statement items.
Here’s Proof That Google Must Really Need More Google+ Local Reviews (ReadWrite)
As Google tries to make Google+ a viable place to learn about local businesses, it seems to be having trouble getting enough reviews of local businesses. At least in New York City, anyway. As Google tries to make Google+ a viable place to learn about local businesses, it seems to be having trouble getting enough reviews of local businesses.
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