Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s Bet On Gift Cards, Foursquare’s Data Appeal
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Facebook Ditches Physical Gifts To Double-Down On Digital Codes And Its Own Brick-&-Mortar Gift Card (TechCrunch)…. Why Yahoo and Apple Want Foursquare’s Data (Fast Company)…
Without Seamless, Fewer Customers and Higher Margins (Bloomberg Businessweek)
DataSphere’s Cowan: Still A Big Opportunity In Coupons For SMBs
The online coupon space would seem tired, over-saturated, and too fragmented. Yet DataSphere is making a big push into the local-business coupon space, launching a consumer-facing site, LocalSaver. Gary Cowan, SVP or product and marketing at DataSphere, talks about the company’s plans to become “the RetailMeNot of local business coupons” and drive customers through local companies’ doors…
LBMA Podcast: Millenial/JumpTap, Placed, and Siamese Systems
On the show: Google launches Carousel visual search; Renew London smart recycling bins are sniffing your MAC address; Millennial scoops up JumpTap; Tour Sicily with the San Pellegrino robot; Placed trying to morph into the ComScore of the real world; Riding the payment waves without batteries; Special guest Alex Kottoor of Siamese Systems talks mobile CSI…
Survey: 52% of SMBs Still Don’t Have a Website
Yodle has released the findings from its first Small Business Sentiment Survey, which recently asked 306 small business owners nationwide for their perspectives on a variety of topics, and found some interesting results when it comes to SMBs and technology. According to the survey, “many small business owners are still not adopting modern technology and marketing approaches.”
What Comes After Local TV?
Let’s assume that local TV, like local radio did before it, will have to morph into something different. What would that look like? How would it make money? What content would it or could it produce that would accumulate an audience that it could sell? Is one-to-many still an advantage of any sort? Will the new model in any way resemble the old?
Strategies for Overcoming Privacy Concerns With Indoor Navigation Apps
When it comes to the widespread adoption of indoor positioning and navigation tools among retailers, technology isn’t nearly as big of a barrier as consumer pushback. To help answer the question of how indoor navigation providers should help their clients deal with these issues, we reached out to experts in the industry. Here are their strategies for success…
Stuck in the Middle: Why Should ‘Local’ Mean ‘San Francisco?’
I’m pretty well immersed in Dallas’ start-up community, and I’ve noticed a sea change in the last couple years. We may not have the flashy, high-profile buzz-making scene that you’ll find in Silicon Valley (or Alley), but investments are happening. I think that’s partly because we’ve had to make it without the mutli-million dollar seed rounds and gut through on wits and angel investment…
5 Things SMBs Need to Know About Their Customers in the Multiplatform Era
In a Street Fight webinar Tuesday sponsored by YP, Greg Sterling, a senior analyst with Opus Research and contributing editor at Search Engine Land spoke with Sanjay Sood, YP’s SVP of consumer platforms, about new strategies small businesses can use to get discovered by consumers in the smartphone age…
Transaction Overview: Go Daddy Acquires Locu for $70 Million
With the acquisition of Locu, Go Daddy is beginning to move beyond its legacy domain registration and web hosting legacy and showing that it has the strategic aptitude and willingness to acquire to provide a more complete solution for local businesses to manage and market themselves. We expect Locu to be a compelling value proposition to Go Daddy’s 11 million customers…
Street Fight Daily: Pay-Per-Gaze Advertising, 17.4% of Global Web Traffic from Mobile
How Pay-Per-Gaze Advertising Could Work With Google Glass (New York Times) … Google and Waze Finally Start Showing Off Each Other’s Tech (VentureBeat) … 17.4% of Global Web Traffic Comes Through Mobile (Mashable) …
Getting Drones to Do Our Hyperlocal Bidding
Drones are the perfect last-mile delivery vehicle for small loads. Ultimately, I envision a future where the drones do all the local delivery and put the brick-and-mortar shops on much more even footing with Amazon and other larger providers. Why would I use this service? Because if I can buy from people that I have a personal relationship with and enjoy the same frictionless commerce and zero hassle, I will do it much of the time…
5 Strategies for Finding Funding as an Early-Stage Startup
Although it’s a given that the founders of most early-stage hyperlocals need funding to bring their ideas to life, many entrepreneurs are still unsure of where to turn for financing during the earliest days. To answer that question, we reached out to executives who’ve founded hyperlocal companies and asked what worked for them…
PriceGrabber Acquires Snapette
Mobile shopping app Snapette is getting a new home. The company, which has 1.5 million users, is being acquired by e-commerce platform and shopping site PriceGrabber for an undisclosed sum. For Snapette, it’s a play for scale. The company boasts partnerships with over 200 brands and retailers worldwide, but PriceGrabber puts millions of shoppers in touch with more than 12,000 merchants and sellers, driving more than $1 billion in annual sales…
Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Acquires Locu, Zillow Snaps Up StreetEasy
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… GoDaddy Acquires Merchant ‘Finder’ Startup Locu for $70 Million (AllThingsD)… Leaked Revenue Figures Illustrate Need For Hundreds Of Patch Layoffs (TechCrunch)… Internet Impacts Roughly $1.83 Trillion in Offline Buying (ScreenWerk)…
6 Strategies for Patching Up Patch
To meet the promise he made to shareholders, AOL’s chief executive Tim Armstrong is in the process of cutting staff and other costs at Patch in the hopes that his network of hyperlocal sites will be profitable by the end of 2013. But just making short-term cuts to hit profitability might not be the optimum choice. Patch also has to plant seedlings for mid- and long-term benefits that the company can reap 6-12 months from now…
7 Mobile Tools for Customer Communication
When it comes to customer service, convenience is everything. Businesses that expect customers to reach out with questions in person or via telephone are taking the wrong approach. Here are seven tools that local merchants can use to communicate with customers and answer questions about product availability, hours of operation, location, and other basic support information…
Street Fight Daily: Inside Patch’s Revenues, Yelp Adds Mobile Reviews
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… 
Inside Patch’s Leaked Revenue Numbers And Its Hunt For Profitability (TechCrunch)… Yelp Adds Mobile Reviews (Mashable)…
Groupon Suspends Sales Rep While It Investigates Thinly Veiled Yelp Review Threat (AllThingsD)
Why Your Consumer-Oriented Hyperlocal Startup Is Going to Fail
I’m sorry to say it, but if your hyperlocal, consumer-focused start-up’s business model is driven by local business sales and marketing dollars, it’s most likely going to fail. I know this because I have spent the past several years dissecting and analyzing every consumer-focused, hyperlocal app imaginable. In an effort to build my own “awesome” hyperlocal app, UPlanMe, I was not only figuring out our own business model, but I was analyzing all of the potential competitors and their business models’ around us…