Street Fight Daily: What Apple Left Out, Google Kills Coupons

Share this:

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

simple-apple-logoWhat Apple Didn’t Announce At WWDC 2014 (ReadWrite)
Apple threw a truckload of new features at both developers and consumers today. But expectations rarely fail to run ahead of reality where Apple is concerned, and the company failed to announce expected features around maps and iBeacon, the company’s proximity-sensor.

5 Tools for Creating SMB Video Promotions (Street Fight)
As small business marketers search for new ways to capture the attention of potential customers, they’re beginning to take a closer look at online video promotions, which are cheaper than TV advertising and more eye-catching than static banner ads. Here are five tools that SMBs can use to create localized video promotions.

Google Will Kill Off Its Digital Coupon Business, Zavers (Recode)
Google has decided to discontinue a 17-month-old initiative that let shoppers clip coupons online and then get those savings when they purchased products in the stores of partnering retailers. The product, dubbed Zavers by Google, launched in January of last year following Google’s 2011 acquisition of a startup called Zave Networks.

Online Home Improvement Company Houzz Looking To Raise At $2.3 Billion Valuation (Forbes)
Houzz, an online community focusing on architecture and home design, is looking to raise $150 million at more than a $2 billion valuation, according to documents filed in Delaware. Houzz has 20 million monthly users and addresses a $300 billion home improvement market by providing a platform where consumers can connect to home improvement professionals.

StubHub Music Launches, Aims to be The Ticketing- And Discovery-Minded “LinkedIn for Fans” (Pando)
StubHub has long played the role of Red Sox to Ticketmaster’s Yankees – a formidable and well-respected competitor with but a fraction of the pedigree. With today’s release of StubHub Music, the eBay-owned ticketing platform revealed its ambitions to stand alongside Facebook and its fellow social networks.

Hyatt CEO Sees no Serious Threat From Fast-Growing Airbnb (Yahoo)
Even as hotel trade groups in New York and San Francisco push to have Airbnb hosts adhere to stricter regulation, leaders of the lodging industry profess to see little imminent threat from the online room-rental service. Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian said he sees no need for a direct business response to Airbnb, in part because it is offering a fundamentally different product than do his branded hotels.

Fidelity Joins Race to Fund Uber, Sees Valuation at $17B (Reuters)
Fidelity Investments has joined the race to lead Uber Technologies Inc’s new financing, valuing the San Francisco-based online car booking service provider at about $17 billion. The completion of this new financing would make the company more valuable than car-rental service Hertz Global Holdings Inc and retailer Best Buy Co.

Google’s Plan to Get Couch Potatoes Outside (Outside)
It might suprise some that Google would come up with a project to demonstrate that tech can be used to get us to reengage with the “real world.” That’s the idea behind a location-based gaming phenomenon called Ingress, though the project’s ultimate value may lie in the way it fosters camaraderie among strangers, while forcing participants to get up off their asses.

Retailers, Indoor Location and the Risk of ‘Tight Geofencing’ (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: Researchers agree that consumers do use smartphones in stores and that the information accessed can and does impact buying decisions. If retailers fail to embrace indoor location , over time they will simply be reduced to commodity providers of goods that can be bought elsewhere for less.

Get Street Fight Daily in your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletter.

Tags:
Previous Post

5 Tools for Creating SMB Video Promotions

Next Post

At Mindbody, a Lesson in Focus