Street Fight Daily: Groupon Buys Booking App, Bing Adds Local Inventory
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology
Groupon Buys European Last-Minute Hotel Booking App Blink To Boost Its Travel Business (TheNextWeb)
Groupon announced today that it has acquired European last-minute travel app Blink, which provides same-day hotel reservations, as the daily deals site seeks to boost its Groupon Getaways travel business. Groupon Getaways was launched in 2011 and works with hotels and other partners in a total of 48 countries to provide consumers with travel deals including hotel discounts and full-service tours.
Placeable CEO: Local Directories May Die Off (Street Fight)
Thanks to changing strategic incentives and evolving trends in the search market, Placeable’s CEO Ari Kaufman believes that Google may make changes to its local algorithm that work to push traffic directly to first parties, or keep traffic within its own ecosystem altogether. Street Fight caught up with Kaufman to talk about the state of the local search ecosystem, why Google might devalue directories, and what it means for large brands.
Bing To Include Local Product Inventory In Search Results (SearchEngineLand)
Microsoft and Local Corporation announced a deal in which the latter’s Krillion local product database will be provided to Bing for display in search results. All of the indexed products from retailers like Kmart, Lowe’s and Nordstrom’s will be available on Bing, although it’s not clear if this includes all in-store inventory.
6 Ways Hyperlocal Publishers Can Take Advantage of Online Promotions (Street Fight)
Local merchants are funneling an increasingly large share of their ad budgets toward online promotions, and hyperlocal publishers are well positioned to take advantage of this trend. Here are seven tips for how hyperlocal publishers and local media groups can best take advantage of the shift toward online promotions.
Foursquare Touts 40M Users In Bid For Renewed Relevancy (CNet)
Foursquare hasn’t shared a ton of good news since it took on $40 million in debt last April. But things are looking up for the location-based social network as it begins to wrap its head around advertising and expand its geolocation service’s core features. Now, Foursquare has some strong numbers — 40 million users to be exact — to bolster its claims of good health.
The Data-Driven Future Of Journalism (ReadWrite)
Owen Thomas: The notion of data journalism seems to have devolved into a very narrow concept of hyperlocal reporting driven by municipal databases: a laudable effort, but such a small and often inconsequential application of a powerful idea. Don’t get me wrong: I’m delighted that someone is putting restaurant health-inspection reports on an interactive map. It’s just that we as journalists have so much more to do with our own data.
10 Hyperlocal Business Models (Damian Radliffe)
Damian Radcliffe: Without doubt the single biggest challenge for anyone working in the hyper-local space is financial sustainability. For smaller outlets, scalability may not be a problem, but for larger media organisations it frequently remains a key consideration and the reason why many of them have pulled the plug on their hyperlocal efforts over the years. Here are some clues to the myriad of ways in which different hyperlocal publishers have sought (and are seeking) to make hyperlocal media pay.
Front Desk Raises $3.2 Million To Help Businesses Manage Payments And Scheduling (TechCrunch)
Business management startup Front Desk has raised $3.2 million in seed funding, led by Second Avenue Partners. The company provides businesses with software to organize payments, scheduling and other documents, mainly from mobile devices, targeting businesses like yoga studios and physical therapists, with recurring client relationships through classes, courses and appointments.