Street Fight Daily: Same-Day Delivery Stays Hot, China’s Tencent Bets on Local

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.

postmatesPostmates Closes New Financing Round and Passes 10,000 Deliveries a Week (New York Times)
On Tuesday the company said it was now making more than 10,000 deliveries a week and that it was announcing a new round of financing to help expand to new cities over the next year. Bastian Lehmann, the co-founder and chief executive of Postmates, said in an interview at the company’s headquarters that when you factor in modern-day transportation start-ups, including Uber and Lyft, Postmates is the third most-popular deliver app available today.

Breakfast, a Marketing Agency and Hardware Shop, Offers a Peek Into a Post-Mobile World (Street Fight)
Steven Jacobs: Last week, Fast Company named Breakfast, a small marketing agency in Brooklyn, one of the top 10 most innovative companies in local. The firm’s newest project, a digital signage system called Points, is the culmination of the company’s two-year-long effort to integrate the Internet into the physical world, and an demonstration of a wider shift in the technology and marketing communities beyond the small screens of the mobile phone into a burgeoning Internet of Things.

China’s Tencent Firms up Online-to-offline Muscle With Review Site Buy (Reuters)
China’s Tencent Holdings has bought 20 percent of Dianping, the country’s largest restaurant review and business listing site, as the social media leader lands a blow in Chinese Internet firms’ battle to link online content with offline services. Online-to-offline, or O2O, builds on the meteoric rise of smartphone use in China, turning a simple search into a shopping trip or meal based on the user’s location.

Looking to Woo Mobile Developers, Esri Releases New Tools (Street Fight)
Two years after acquiring the Portland-based startup Geoloqi, Esri is putting the startup’s technology to use. The fifty-five year-old mapping firm released a new geo-trigger service and a redesigned developer site this morning in an effort to build a wider developer tool kit that might serve as an alternative to the native location tools provided by Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android

AP Brings Olympics Coverage to Local News Outlets With Customizable, White-label Microsites (Poynter)
For the last two years, the AP has been providing its members with white-label microsites for sporting events, including the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Around 600 news organizations — mostly newspapers but also radio and TV stations — are taking advantage of customizable, AP-hosted web content for the Olympics.

Heineken Is Turning to Foursquare to Target U.S. Fans of European Football (AdAge)
The beer giant is seeing a lack of activity with its proprietary mobile apps—a sentiment that’s become an all-too-common theme among consumer brands. So the team has established its deepest integration to date with Foursquare, zeroing in on folks who will be watching the UEFA Champions League in bars and restaurants.

In Connecticut, the Independent Media Network Tries to Succeed Where Patch Couldn’t (Nieman Journalism Lab)
The Independent Media Network is a pragmatic and, financially at least, unambitious group of around 80 Connecticut websites — from parenting blogs to religious conversation sites to hard news outlets. Membership in the network is free, and flexible; revenue is shared between a salesperson, the sites, and the network.

Online-to-Offline: From the App to Aisle (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: It goes almost without saying that Pinterest has a massive opportunity to drive e-commerce and offline retail transactions. The question for Pinterest is how deeply it wants to coordinate with retailers. I would argue the more integrated the better for all parties.

eBay and the Declaration of PayPal’s Dependence (Pando)
If Carl Icahn has turned the simple tweet into a weapon in proxy fights, his chief adversary at eBay is returning fire with an older, still formidable weapon: the CEO news interview. John Donahoe has been making the rounds at newsrooms arguing against Icahn’s campaign to spin off PayPal.

iBeacon Sets Consumers’ Phones to Stun (Recode)
Brent Hieggelke: The next six months will see some winning and losing iBeacon-enabled experiences, and businesses will need to quickly mature their approaches and become more customer-centric. If it’s done well, your customers will feel as if they’ve gained a personal shopper — an advocate, even — someone looking out for them, finding them the best deals and delivering personalized service where and when it’s needed most.

The Best Transportation Option in San Francisco Might Be One You’ve Never Heard of (VentureBeat)
Rakesh Agrawal: Startups Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar get all of the attention when we discuss alternative transportation options in San Francisco. But one of my favorites is BMW’s little talked about DriveNow. Rakesh Agrawal: BMW’s DriveNow offers one-way car sharing to designated locations around the Bay Area. You use an app to find a nearby vehicle, unlock the car with a personal access card, and leave the car when you’re done.

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