Street Fight Daily: Gannett Buys Belo, Patch Traffic Flat
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Gannett Agrees to Buy Belo for $1.5 Billion (New York Times)
The Gannett Company agreed on Thursday to buy the Belo Corporation for about $1.5 billion in cash, in a deal that almost doubles Gannett’s television operations. Under the terms of the deal, Gannett will pay $13.75 a share in cash, 28 percent above Belo’s closing price on Wednesday. Gannett will also assume $715 million of Belo’s existing debt.
The NSA’s PRISM Revelations and Hyperlocal Targeting (Street Fight)
Steven Jacobs: Hyperlocal companies rely on the data that consumers knowingly share in order to build profiles and serve them with the most relevant information — but would consumers still assent to this sharing if they truly understood everything that is being done with their digital data?
Patch has Proved To Be a $200 Million Money-Suck for AOL and Its Traffic Hasn’t Grown In a Year (Business Insider)
The Gannett Company agreed on Thursday to buy the Belo Corporation for about $1.5 billion in cash, in a deal that almost doubles Gannett’s television operations. Under the terms of the deal, Gannett will pay $13.75 a share in cash, 28 percent above Belo’s closing price on Wednesday. Gannett will also assume $715 million of Belo’s existing debt.
‘Indies’ and Sustainability: One Destination, Different Paths (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: In this final column on the subject of sustainability in independent news sites, two editor entrepreneurs, David Askins, of the Ann Arbor (Mich.) Chronicle, and Denise Civiletti, of the RiverheadLocal on Long Island, talk about what they’re doing to keep their sites healthy long-term. A third entrepreneur, Ben Ilfeld, the CEO of AdGlue, talks about why innovation is so important to success.
Why Google Bought Waze (Prioleau Advisors)
Since Google already has traffic, maps and a team, the move has been described as a “blocking” move; a move to keep Waze out of the hands of Google’s rivals who might want to use it to build competitive service in the mapping, navigation and traffic markets. If it is a blocking move, it begs the question of what precisely are they blocking…what do they want to tie up, away from competitors, that is worth that much money?
5 Tools for Point of Interest Geo-Targeting (Street Fight)
As the technology behind the most popular geo-targeting platforms continues to improve, marketers have begun to refine their tactics to improve the ROI of their campaigns. One of the latest trends in the world of geo-targeting is known as point-of-interest (POI) targeting, or geo-conquesting.
ComScore: 4 Billion Local Searches in May (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: Out of 20 billion queries overall we can estimate that roughly four billion had a local intent. If we focus just on Google roughly 2.7 billion queries in the US in May carried a local intent.
Boom Time for Zillow, Trulia, Other Web Home-Search Firms (Wall Street Journal)
Prices of Bay Area homes are climbing quickly, but not as fast as the value of Bay Area technology companies that help people search for homes online. This year, for instance, the share prices of real-estate Web-search companies Trulia and Move both with headquarters in the Bay Area, have surged nearly 90% and 60%, respectively.
Digital Mags Can Be More Local, and More Global, Than in Print World (PBS Media Shift)
New digital magazine apps let you unlock new magazine experiences by being in the right place at the right time, or subscribe to global publications without regard to national borders. These apps’ creators want to free magazine readers from geographic constraints, customize their reading experiences, and revitalize public reading with digital tools.
Merging The Digital and Physical: The Challenge of Integrating iPads Into Stores (TheNextWeb)
Recently, it’s become increasingly common for stores to experiment with everything from giant, Windows-powered touch displays to the all-familiar iPad. The promise of increasing engagement and empowering customers makes it a very attractive idea, and even if it’s tough to implement, in-store shoppers are worth targeting.
Groupon Bets on Merchant Services: A Conversation with Mihir Shah (Local Onliner)
VP for Merchant OS Mihir Shah tells us that Groupon’s aim is to provide “mission critical” services for a wide range of local Brick & Mortar businesses, although restaurants currently dominate the mix. The Breadcrumb services leverage Groupon’s existing merchant list, and also seek to convert Groupon’s Mobile App users, which now account for 40 percent of all Groupon revenue. For merchants, “it is a way to perfectly manage yield,” says Shah.
NFC Stands For Nobody F****** Cares And Apple Gets That (TechCrunch)
During Monday’s WWDC keynote, Tim Cook & Co. were cracking jokes at the tech’s expense as they previewed a feature coming in iOS 7 that does the job of NFC without any of the awkwardness of NFC. It’s a classic Apple move to eschew complexity and avoid technology-based redundancy.
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