Street Fight Daily: Foursquare’s Redesigned App, HomeJoy Raises $38M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.
Foursquare 7.0 Brings Passive Location Technology To All (GigaOm)
After months of running a beta to a handful of users, the newer, “smarter” Foursquare is now available to the masses. Foursquare 7.0, released today, will bring passive location push notifications to all of its users, recommending locations nearby. According to the company, the new alerts are designed to create the right balance between performance and battery life, as recommendations are useless if they constantly drain the phone of power.
New Borrell SMB Report: ‘The Deer Have the Guns’ (Street Fight)
The 903 small business owners surveyed in a new study from Borrell Associates said they expected to spend only 12% of their digital advertising budgets in 2013 on banner advertising, sponsorships, and classifieds. Meanwhile they expected to spend more than half of their marketing budgets on owned channels, investing heavily in managing their website (35%), running email marketing campaigns (13%), and social media (14)%.
Homejoy Raises $38M As It Looks To Expand Beyond Home Cleaning (TechCrunch)
The startup, which provides home cleaners for a flat rate of $20 per hour, has now raised a couple of rounds of funding, in the kind of quick succession that’s meant to turn heads. The Series A and B rounds amount to $38 million from Google Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Max Levchin, First Round Capital, Oliver Jung and Mike Hirshland.
Openings and New Hires at Datalogix, Yelp, Clinkle, and ReachLocal (Street Fight)
Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, new hires and jobs at Street Fight, MOGL, VendaAsta, Leaf, and AOL.
EBay, PayPal Pinpoint Stores For Mobile Shopping (USA Today)
EBay has spent many hours and lots of money pinpointing the locations of thousands of retail stores so the e-commerce company can capture sales from smartphone wielding shoppers. Now the company’s PayPal division is using a new technology know as Bluetooth Low Energy to get even more accurate location information inside stores through a gadget called Beacon.
Employee Stock Sales Boom, As Square Considers One At $5 Billion (Information)
There has been a behind-the-scenes explosion of secondary offerings being encouraged by the top ranks at these companies. Leaders at Square have been talking to investors about funding a tender offer for employee shares that would value the company at around $5 billion, according to three people familiar with the company’s thinking.
Amazon’s Grocery Delivery Service, AmazonFresh, May Launch In SF Next Week (AllThingsD)
Another online grocery delivery service seems set to launch in San Francisco, and it’s a big one: AmazonFresh. All signs are pointing to Amazon publicly launching the same- and next-day delivery service in the very near future, based on information that AllThingsD received from a source, as well as several AmazonFresh truck sightings in recent days in San Francisco, and a recent job posting.
Making Mobile Ads That Work (Harvard Business Review)
New research shows that mobile display ads can work for certain types of products: those that are both utilitarian and “high involvement.” Mobile display ads for “hedonic” products (things, such as sports cars and movie tickets, that people buy for pleasure) are unlikely to have any influence, as are ones for “low involvement” products (a tube of toothpaste, a candy bar).
Don’t Expect To Pay With Your Smartphone At The Mall This Holiday Season (ReadWrite)
Dan Rowiski: I went to 21 different stores, booths and kiosks at the Cambridgeside Galleria, the biggest mall in the Boston metro area, to see if I could pay with my phone. Of those 21 stores, seven accepted some type of mobile payment. Three were the cellular carriers—AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile—that used their proprietary Isis payments app. Two others were Starbucks, which has its own payment app (it also takes Square Wallet), and Teavana, which is owned by Starbucks and can use the same app.
LBMA Podcast: Flybits, and VistarMedia’s Jeremy Ozon (Street Fight)
On the show: PropertyShark maps toxic materials in New York City; British Airways marries planes and billboards; Bon-Ton goes all Agent 99 on us with NFC shoes; Placecast works with Aha Radio to bring context to deals; and Rehabstudio gives us the storefront of the future.
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