Street Fight Daily: Facebook Reaches 1M Advertisers, Waze Deal May Invite Scrunity
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology
Facebook Reaches 1 Million Active Advertisers As Small Businesses Adopt (Reuters)
Facebook said on Tuesday it now has 1 million active advertisers globally who used the platform in the last 28 days, a milestone for the company that is seeking to revive its revenue growth. A vast majority of those advertisers are small business owners who have flocked to the world’s No. 1 social network.
Authenticity: The Force Behind the Local Snowball Effect (Street Fight)
One of the new values that the Web demands is authenticity. For news, it means a commitment to truthfulness by bringing readers or viewers as close as possible to the source of information. In business, it also means being truthful in our behavior, attributions and even our intentions. It’s an underappreciated and underutilized value, and it strikes at the very heart of marketing — especially at the hyperlocal level.
Google’s Effort to Skirt Regulation May Invite More Scrutiny (New York Times)
Google’s motto is “don’t be evil.” But its recent acquisition of Waze, reportedly for $1 billion in cash, shows that just because you’re not evil, it doesn’t mean you can’t be aggressive in pushing the boundaries of the law. The question now is whether the United States government pushes back and forces Google to give back its new toy.
How to Win The National-to-Local War with Technology and Services (Street Fight)
Chris Marentis: Enterprises still face the same issues as they did 30 years ago — namely, ensuring a consistent national-to-local implementation at “the last mile.” With more moving parts in digital media today, it is much harder to implement a successful national to local digital marketing program unless dealers (or franchises, contractors, physicians, etc.) are onboard, active participants and investing in the program.
Groupon Pivots Amid Management Upheaval, Lagging Stock Price (AdAge)
Groupon’s recent shift in strategy is partially aimed at repairing its relationships with merchants. The company’s CMO Rich Williams said he wants Groupon’s image to change from “this thing you get in your inbox each morning that maybe shocks and awes you into buying” to a searchable deals database users visit whenever they’re feeling adventurous.
Google Updates Local Search Results On Desktop With Carousel Design (TechCrunch)
At the end of last year, Google introduced a new design for some local search results on tablets that put a carousel with the top results at the top of the page. Today, it’s bringing this design to the desktop, too. This new feature can be triggered by searches for restaurants, bars and other local places.
Does Main Street Need Another Payments System? (Bloomberg Businessweek)
EBay’s (EBAY) PayPal, Groupon’s (GRPN) Breadcrumb POS, and Square are vying to reimagine the cash register for Main Street merchants. Boston-based startup Punchey is launching a new payments system today to join the competition.” Founded in 2011 by Nathaniel Stevens, who previously founded local online marketing company Yodle, the 20-employee company is built around a credit-card reader that plugs into merchants’ smartphones.
SpaceCurve Raises $10M To Make Sense of Our Streams of Location Data (GigaOm)
SpaceCurve, a Seattle-based startup building a database designed to handle streams of geospatial data, has raised a $10 million Series B round from Triage Ventures, Reed Elsevier Ventures and Divergent Ventures. The company launched in early 2012, and is promising customers the ability to build location-based products like Waze and a whole lot more.
Yelp Advertisers Now Able To Promote Transactions Directly From Yelp Business Listings (Yelp)
Yelp announced a new Call to Action feature today that allows business owners to promote specific transactions directly on their Yelp business listing. In an attempt to increase potential revenue for advertisers, the new Call to Action feature enables a link within an advertiser’s business listing that will take consumers to the website where the transaction can be completed.
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