Street Fight Daily: OpenTable Tests Payments, New Life for EveryBlock

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology

51RqP8bYXgL._SL500_AA300_OpenTable Begins Testing Mobile Payments (New York Times)
OpenTable, the world’s largest online reservation service, lets users book a restaurant reservation with its smartphone app or Web site. Now the company is getting ready to take the next step and let diners pay for the meal with its app, too. At the end of a meal, the diner will be able to open the OpenTable app and pay the check with the tap of a button.

How a Big Agency Merger Could Benefit Local Ad Sellers (Street Fight)
Terry Heaton: While I certainly believe that big data is our future, nuance at the local level is a part of accuracy when it comes to the providing of filters. This is an advantage that we have in local media, and we should not be shy about making that known to small and medium-sized businesses in the communities we serve.

Five Months After EveryBlock Shuts Down, A Media Company Revives The Product (PBS Media Shift)
A little more than five months after NBC News shut down its hyperlocal product, EveryBlock.com, the original open-source application has been resurrected in Columbia, Mo. Visitors to The Columbia Daily Tribune’s new Neighborhoods site will see a different emphasis and a new hope for a project that has slowed under the weight of government disability and technical complexity.

7 Ways CPG Brands Can Leverage Location-Based Marketing (Street Fight)
Location-based marketing tools make sense for retailers trying to drive customers into their stores, but what about brand advertisers? Here are seven strategies that brands can use to take advantage of location-based marketing tools right now, even without having their own physical establishments.

Groupon’s Restaurant Reservation Service Goes Mobile (Mashable)
Groupon Reserve functionality is coming to Groupon’s existing iPhone app on Tuesday. Groupon promises the Reserve tab will give users discounts of up to 40% in some 600 restaurants in Groupon’s top 10 market. In the near future, Groupon hopes to let users make reservations at spas, hotels and salons as well.

How Google Has Completely Botched Zagat (Bloomberg Businessweek)
Since being acquired by Google in 2011 for $125 million, Zagat has been in turnaround. That changed Monday when Google reintroduced Zagat to the world as a free site and mobile app for Android and iOS. But today the world needs another restaurant app like it needs another 11-course tasting menu.

Yelp More Likely To Filter Extreme Reviews & New Accounts (MarketingLand)
Yelp keeps the details of its review filter algorithm secret, for obvious reasons, but a new study suggests that there are some things about the review and the reviewer that are more likely to trigger the filter. The researchers found that Yelp’s review filter had hidden more than 50,000 of those, or about 16 percent of all the reviews they scraped for the study.

Google Rolls Out New “Views” Site For Geotagging And Sharing Your Android Photo Spheres (TheNextWeb)
Google today announced the launch of a new community site called Views. Google has fired up a new Views page that lets users tie their photo spheres to specific locations for when static maps and satellite fly-bys just aren’t immersive enough. The new service serves one main purpose: it’s a place to publicly share your photo spheres to Google Maps.

Nara Gets First Telco Customer As SingTel Tries To Fend Off Content Competition (TechCrunch)
SingTel has licensed Nara Logics‘ restaurant recommendation engine in a bid to give its Digital Life assets a shot in the arm. The deal will see SingTel license Nara’s “Pandora for restaurants” algorithm, which is aimed at creating personalized lists of eating places for users.

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