Street Fight Daily: Airbnb’s Grand Plans, Foursquare’s Recommended Future
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
Inside Airbnb’s Grand Hotel Plans (Fast Comapny)
The company’s co-founder, Brian Chesky has decided that Airbnb will become nothing less than a full-blown hospitality brand, one that delivers a seamless end-to-end experience when its customers travel. His idea is to create a portfolio of new services that make the Airbnb experience more consistent from stay to stay, and that can generate lots and lots of additional revenue.
A ‘Connected’ Closet? As if — or Maybe Not (Street Fight)
Steven Jacobs: DigitasLBi Labs, the agency’s tech incubator in Paris, has built an in-store shopping assistant that uses image recognition software and Bluetooth low-energy beacons to match, recommend, and display possible additions to a shopper’s wardrobe. The group developed the “inspiration corridor” in conjunction with Klépierre, a french real estate company that operates malls across the country, and has installed the prototype in a Parisian shopping center.
Foursquare CEO: How We’ll Tell You Where To Eat And What To Order (ReadWrite)
The cofounder and CEO of Foursquare envisions a future where our mobile devices learn our behavior and provide suggestions for events, or what to eat for dinner based on a taste profile the company has developed by observing our behavior over the years. People will spend less time on decisions and more time on experience, because our phones can make them for us.
7 Strategies for Leveraging In-Store Beacons (Street Fight)
Indoor beacons are bridging the gap between physical locations and digital experiences, and allowing developers and businesses to interact with consumers based on their proximity to specific locations. But as with any new technology, indoor beacons do have their limitations and marketers need to be strategic in order to get the best use out of them.
Matt Cutts: Google Mobile Queries May Surpass PC Search This Year (SearchEngineLand)
Speaking at SMX West last week Google’s Matt Cutts said that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if mobile search exceeded desktop queries this year. A similar comment was made by a Google speaker informally during a roundtable discussion at the International Franchising Association conference in New Orleans earlier this year.
Trulia’s $45 Million Ad Buy Involves More Dollars Than Sense (Pando)
Trulia’s $45 million ad campaign is so bold as to be preposterous. This new ad buy for Trulia sees the company spending roughly 40 percent of all the money it made in 2013, and represents a nearly 600 percent increase on its 2013 marketing budget.
Seattle Deals A Blow To Uber And Lyft By Limiting The Number Of Ride-Sharing Drivers On The Road (TechCrunch)
In the biggest blow yet to ride sharing in the U.S., the Seattle City Council voted today to limit the number of drivers available on Uber, Lyft, SideCar, and other on-demand transportation services available in the city. By ensuring that companies like Lyft and Uber can have no more than 150 drivers on each platform, the vote essentially kills any competition to the city’s existing taxi regime.
Meet Cloak, the ‘Antisocial’ Network That Helps You Avoid People (WashingtonPost)
We have myriad tech-enabled ways to encounter friends (and strangers!) in real life. But the inevitable backlash has, at last, arrived: It’s called Cloak, and it’s an “antisocial network” that uses social check-ins and other geo-location information to help you avoid people you’d, well, rather not see.
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