Street Fight Daily: Amazon Tests Local Commerce, GrubHub Raises Pricing
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
Report: Amazon to Expand Into Real-World Payments With New Amazon Local Commerce Business (Fierce Wireless)
Ecommerce giant Amazon is embarking on a major new effort to enable the sale of stuff in the real world. The operation is headed by Charlie Kindel, who tweeted out a new series of job postings for “Amazon Local Comomerce” division earlier this week.
Assess Your Clients’ Local Search Competition in Three Quick Steps (Street Fight)
David Mihm: Congratulations! You’ve just signed that hard-to-land client that’s been in your sales pipeline for months. Now the hard (or, I think, the fun) work begins. Where can you deliver the most value for this hard-earned client, right from Day One?
GrubHub IPO Pricing Tops Estimate (Chicago Tribune)
GrubHub has priced its initial public offering at $26 per share, valuing the online food ordering company at $2.04 billion. GrubHub, the largest U.S. online food delivery services company, first said it expected shares to price at between $20 and $22 per share, but had raised that to $23-$25 per share.
Online Services Go Offline in China (Wall Street Journal)
In the U.S., startups from Silicon Valley and other places have long been merging online services with offline real-life experiences like taking a taxi, eating out, going to the movies and shopping at brick-and mortar stores. Now that trend is taking China by storm, but more rapidly and at a much larger scale.
Uber vs. Lyft: The $500 Million Battle to Decide How You Ride (Wired)
Often lost in the debates over ride-sharing is the key role technology plays behind the scenes to connect riders and drivers. The competition between Lyft and Uber is very much about who can build the algorithms that best solve the basic underlying logistical problem of getting a ride.
Three Years After Disastrous Super Bowl Ad, Groupon Returns to TV (AdWeek)
After running one of the most widely reviled ads in recent Super Bowl history, Groupon today launched its first TV spot since 2011. Created in partnership with crowdsourcing agency Victors & Spoils, the new work is quite a bit more straightforward than the faux charity ad that starred Timothy Hutton.
Google Wallet Loses Another Top Executive (Wall Street Journal)
Peter Hazlehurst, director of product management at Google Wallet, has left the Internet company, the latest executive departure from Google’s mobile-payments business. Hazlehurst’s departure comes soon after Philippe Dauman Jr., business development lead for Google Wallet’s Instant Buy service, left to join Twitter.
Washington Post Shuts Down Local Services Finder ServiceAlley (Washington Business Journal)
The Washington Post is shutting down ServiceAlley, a review and recommendation tool for local services that launched in 2011. The free service, available on Web, iOS and Android, provided users a platform to find and vet plumbers, handymen, pest exterminators, roofers, electricians and other professionals.
Khosla VC Rabois Looks To Make Homes Easy To Sell In A Few Clicks (TechCrunch)
Keith Rabois, the former Square and PayPal executive who is now handling much of Khosla Ventures’ consumer investments, has a new side gig. He’s co-founding a company under the codename Homerun that will make it easy to sell entire homes in a few clicks, which is aiming to launch sometime mid-year.
LBMA Podcast: Facebook and Oculus, PayPal and Placed (Street Fight)
Top stories of the week include Iconeme’s talking mannequins; Shyp shipped; Adtile’s kinetic ads for smart watches; AT&T shutting down its Alerts program; Pepsi’s unbelievable bus shelter; and Spacified’s matching service for pop-up store space.
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