Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Gets $41M Infusion, Mobile Drives Hyperlocal Demand
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Foursquare Gets $41 Million Investment, Time to Grow (AllThingsD)
In early April Foursquare got $41 million from private equity fund Silver Lake Partners and venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and Spark Capital. The bulk of the money is a multiyear loan from Silver Lake; the rest is convertible debt that can eventually be swapped for shares.
The ‘New News Ecology’ Needs to Be Nourished With Sustainable Revenue (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: The grand, this-is-where-we’re-going commitment at the Journalism That Matters meeting held last week in Denver was encouraging. Local journalism needs this re-invention of what it does and how it relates to a newly empowered public that is outgrowing its old role as a passive consumer of news. I hope, though, that JTM members will also make “investigating new economic models” an important part of the new news ecology they’re creating.
Study: Hyperlocal Demand Driven by Mobile Devices (Journalism.co.uk)
Demand for hyperlocal content is being driven by increased usage of mobile devices according to a study conducted by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) charitable foundation. The study, UK Demand for Hyperlocal Media, which is based on a survey of 2,248 people, also highlights readers’ reasons for accessing hyperlocal content; regions where hyperlocals are more popular and which demographics are more frequent users of hyperlocal content.
Swipely Launches New Merchant Tools, Reports 100% Network Growth in Q1 (Street Fight)
Swipely, which provides local merchants with tools and data to help them accept payments and better understand their customers, has launched a new marketing tool that allows merchants to track online marketing, in-store revenue, and customer reviews that are tied to specific campaigns. The company also announced that its network of small businesses doubled in size in the past 90 days.
Our Discussion of Mobile Location Needs to Get Much More Nuanced, Sophisticated (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: Simple notions about how location fits into mobile marketing and advertising are starting to give way to something more nuanced and complex. Two announcements in the past 24 hours from Facebook and Flurry illustrate how location will probably be incorporated into a larger battery of targeting parameters (not unlike on the PC) going forward.
Potrero Hill Crackles With Online Chatter (Wall Street Journal)
Launched in October 2011, San Francisco-based Nextdoor bills itself as a private social network for neighborhoods and has grown to more than 10,000 sites nationwide. The Bay Area, with between 500 and 1,000 Nextdoor sites, is among the most active in the country because of its ties to Silicon Valley, says Nirav Tolia, co-founder and chief executive officer.
eBay’s PayPal and Magento Join Hands to Offer a Mobile Payment Service (GigaOm)
When eBay bought Magento in 2011 it gained an e-commerce platform that merchants could use to create custom online stores, but eBay has largely kept Magento separate from its most famous e-commerce acquisition, PayPal. That’s now changing, though, as the two are announcing a partnership to integrate PayPal’s m-commerce and mobile payments technology with Magento’s service.
Lightbank Invests In Walk.by, A New Platform Connecting Local Merchants With Online Shoppers By Way Of Smartphones (TechCrunch)
Lightbank has invested in its own Founder-in-Residence Josh Hernandez’s new startup, Walk.by, a platform for bringing local merchants into the e-commerce world by way of smartphones. The company is today announcing the release of its consumer-facing iPhone app which lets shoppers browse and follow offline retailers, the brands they carry, as well as very specific items, like “brown leather boots” or “black Kate Spade maxi dress,” for example.
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