Street Fight Daily: Clinkle Revealed, Ride-Sharing War Intensifies
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
Clinkle Revealed: Here’s What the Embattled Startup Is (And Isn’t) Building (Recode)
What we’ve heard little of are Clinkle’s plans: What has it been building with its investors’ $30-million-plus in funding? We think we’ve got answers. According to three people with direct knowledge of Clinkle’s product roadmap, here’s Clinkle’s planned trajectory and where it has stumbled.
Case Study: Ace Hardware Uses Mobile Tools to Drive Shoppers In-Store (Street Fight)
National hardware chain Ace Hardware recently debuted a new mobile iPhone application, meant to enhance the shopping experience and encourage customers to complete their transaction at local Ace Hardware locations.
Ride-Sharing Price War Intensifies With Lyft’s ‘Happy Hour’ Discount (Wall Street Journal)
The latest promotion in the rid-sharing wars comes from Lyft, which today announced “Happy Hour,” a discount of 10% to 50% off rides during times of low demand for the service. The deals could help Lyft drivers pick up more fares on average, the company said in a blog post.
Is Facebook Paper the Wake-up Call Publishers Need? (Street Fight)
John Lervik: Media companies and publishers need to take a page from Facebook and other fast-moving digital properties. Publishers who were virtually sidelined by these digital powerhouse companies can now get back in the game by adopting a Zuckerberg move: creating the right conditions and culture.
LivingSocial to Prioritize Growth Over Profitability, New Chief Revenue Officer Says (Washington Post)
After a tumultuous year-and-a-half from mid-2012 through 2013 as executives attempted to make the District-based company profitable, the company is now shifting to revenue growth. With $250 million in fresh capital from its sale of South Korea-based Ticket Monster, LivingSocial plans to invest heavily in adding new subscribers and expanding its recently launched Web site of coupons and discounts.
Yandex Acquires Geolocation Startup KitLocate to Boost Mobile Search (Recode)
Yandex, the Internet giant that dominates the search engine market in Russia and much of Eastern Europe, announced on Tuesday it had acquired KitLocate, a startup focused on location technology for smartphones. The move comes as Yandex has sought to beef up its mobile search and social tech over the last few years, especially as more of the world has moved from desktop search to using smartphones as a primary computing device.
Airbnb’s Response to Its Latest Scandal Proves That the New Disruptors are Growing Up (Pando)
Airbnb has been praised for its reaction to a customer whose apartment was used to host an orgiastic night of debauchery instead of the meek guests he was promised. Companies like Airbnb and Uber used to shirk liabilities and manage controversies by distancing themselves from the people who use their products — now they’re starting to take responsibility for them.
What Does Mobile Query Growth Mean for Local Search? (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: Any way you slice it there are many billions of location-intent or offline-intent searches going through PCs and mobile devices. However there’s a major lag or gap between consumer behavior and marketers’ response in terms of location targeting.
Who Is Leading The Digital Mobile Payment Influence Battle? (Forbes)
According to new research, there has been a significant increase in the volume of influential conversations relating to mobile payments thus far in 2014. Since Apple CEO Tim Cook’s announcement about the tech giant’s interest in mobile payment, there has been a sustained level of reactions at almost 2x the levels we saw before Mr. Cook spoke.
How to Improve Yelp’s Top 100 Restaurant Rankings (Harvard Business Review)
Eddie Yoon: Yelp is a go-to app many people, but we want sortable online reviews by consumer context. The issue with reviews is a broader one, as many companies have an approach to growth and innovation that is technology for technology sake, with little regard to the consumer context or emerging or latent demand.
DNAinfo Turning in to Radio News (Rober Feder)
In the latest expansion of DNAinfo.com Chicago, the hyperlocal news operation is about to add an audio news service to its digital platform. Starting Wednesday, DNAinfo Radio will be streamed through an audio player on the home page of the website.
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