Street Fight Daily: Twitter Tests Calls, A Deep Look at Uber
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
Twitter Tries to Prove Its Ads Drive Sales with Click-to-Call (Digiday)
As part of its continued effort to evolve and broaden its advertising capabilities, Twitter is now touting itself as a platform for effective direct response advertising. The microblogging platform is beta-testing a “click-to-call” button, which would allow mobile users to engage with a Twitter ad by calling the advertiser directly.
Which Hyperlocal Startup Will Be Next to IPO? (Street Fight)
Steven Jacobs: After two years of relative quiet, the hyperlocal industry is once again set to make a splash in the public markets. This year’s class is flush with some of the biggest names in tech, and signals a key shift in the business models that dominate the local technology market today.
A Deeper Look at Uber’s Dynamic Pricing Model (Above the Crowd)
Bill Gurley: Over the course of the past year, many writers have offered their perspectives on Uber’s dynamic pricing strategy. Perhaps the only consistency is that people have deeply passionate views on this topic. However, there are still many misperceptions about how the model works, and the purpose of this post is to clarify some of those misperceptions.
5 Tools for Targeting Customers Based On Their Historic Locations (Street Fight)
Where consumers have been is just as important as where they’re going. Being able to track the historical — and in some cases, even future — locations of a consumer makes it possible for retailers and brands to strategically target mobile ads to the places where they know their customers are likely to be. Here are five tools that businesses can use to target customers based on where they’ve been.
EBay Rejects Icahn board Nominees, Asks Investors to do Same (Reuters)
EBay on Monday rejected activist investor Carl Icahn’s two nominees to its board, saying both were unqualified, and urged shareholders to vote against them at its next annual meeting. Icahn, who owns just over 2 percent of the e-commerce company, has been pressuring eBay for weeks to spin off its PayPal payments business.
Life After Patch: Former Editors Start Their Own Hyperlocal Sites (American Journalism Review)
What Patch has left behind was a group of highly trained digital editors, a handful of them with aspirations higher than moving on to another media company on shaky ground. These editors have left Patch and started their own local news ventures, or joined a fresh crop of hyperlocal startups started by others in communities around the country.
Billboard Bounce: Political Ad Spending Up 13% for Outdoor Media (AdAge)
With an increasing number of politicians, advocates and third-party groups flooding a never-ending election cycle, political players are turning to an old-school solution to avoid the clutter and expense of TV advertising: the billboard. The Outdoor Advertising Association of America, citing an analysis of Kantar Media data, says political ad spending on outdoor advertising grew 13.3% between the 2009-2010 election cycle and the 2011-2012 cycle.
Why the Next $50 Billion Company Won’t Be Just Online (Inc.)
On the third day of the 21st annual South by Southwest Interactive festival, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman argued that the future’s most audacious–and financially successful–startups will be end-to-end startups. These companies control the entire experience, from the software to the real-world element. Think Amazon, Uber, Airbnb
Seattle Moves To Curb Uber, Other Ride-Share Services (NPR)
Uber, Lyft, and similar companies that pair people who pay for a car ride with drivers who operate outside the traditional taxi system are facing new limits in Seattle, where the City Council’s Taxi Committee recently voted to cap the number of “ride-share” drivers. Taxi companies have been vocal opponents of the web-based services, which they say have an unfair advantage because they play by different rules.
Yelp Gets Blasted By Business Owners And Celebrity (WebProNews)
Yelp is taking some harsh criticism in the media once again. Its handling of fake reviews is coming under fire, as is its worth to consumers. Business owners are speaking out (as usual), and celebrity chef/TV personality/food writer Andrew Zimmern, who has been critical of Yelp in the past, is calling it “worthless.”
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