Street Fight Daily: Comcast Reviving Everyblock, DeliveryHero Raises $350M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
Comcast Bets on Hyperlocal by Reviving EveryBlock (Washington Post)
The cable giant Comcast is reviving the once-future of local online news, announcing on its corporate blog that it has expanded its relaunch of the news and social site EveryBlock to include its home city of Philadelphia, at the same time the company is digging into its potential nation-wide merger with Time Warner Cable.
Booker Eyes New Markets, More Capital (Street Fight)
Sixteen months ago, Bain Capital’s venture wing made a $27 million bet on Booker. Now, the company says its gearing up to raise another big round in order to help propel it into a number of new appointment and class-based verticals and hold off a bevy of increasingly well-capitalized competitors.
Delivery Hero, Hungry For Growth, Orders Up Another $350M In Funding (TechCrunch)
Two weeks after reaching a $1 billion valuation, Berlin-based online food ordering and delivery site Delivery Hero has yet more news: the company has raised another $350 million. This brings the total amount raised this year alone by Delivery Hero to $520 million, and the overall total raised to $635 million.
7 Ways Loyalty Programs Can Increase Social Media Exposure (Street Fight)
More than one-in-three small businesses now has a loyalty program in place, but that doesn’t mean that local merchants are always taking full advantage of the benefits that these hyperlocal marketing platforms can provide. Here are seven ways that businesses can use existing digital loyalty programs to help increase reach on social networks.
Nokia Plans to Unfurl New Mobile Map App (Wall Street Journal)
Nokia mapping business is making a new push to bring its maps directly to consumers, as the company tries to play catch-up with rival mobile mapping services provided by Google and Apple. The Finnish technology supplier will soon release free-of-charge map apps for mobile devices running Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS platforms. (Subscription required)
Mom-and-Pop Shops Fly to the Cloud (CNBC)
A new crop of emerging cloud players is creating software for the millions of mom-and-pop shops, pulling some into the digital world for the first time. A company called ZenPayroll, which specializes in offering smaller companies cloud-based payroll services, like pay, benefits and tax withholding, said Wednesday that it had partnerships with a dozen other online companies.
MCX Launches CurrentC, a Mobile Wallet for Walmart, Best Buy and Other Retailers (GigaOm)
In 2012, dozens of big retailers like Walmart, Target, CVS and Best Buy banded together to create their own smartphone payments network and mobile wallet. Two years later, that payment platform finally has a name, CurrentC, and a launch timeline, 2015.
Daimler Buys Uber-Rival Mytaxi in Services Expansion (Bloomberg)
The maker of Mercedes-Benz bought the mytaxi and RideScout apps as the world’s third-largest maker of luxury cars steps up its expansion into transport services. The acquisition is part of Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche’s to attract new, younger customers, who are less interested in owning their own car.
Groupon Nips At Yelp and OpenTable With Time-Based Deals (TechCrunch)
Groupon has added a new feature that will let businesses offer deals to users to be redeemed at a specific time in the day. Groupon says that the product is being rolled out first to restaurants and other food and drink establishments with the intention to expand that to other categories later on.
Isis — The Payments Consortium, Not The Jihadist Group — Rebrands Its Mobile Wallet as Softcard (GigaOm)
The Isis mobile wallet just got a new name: Softcard. For those of you that haven’t been keeping up with global affairs, another organization called ISIS — English shorthand for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — has been dominating the headlines, known for its acts of terror rather than smartphone payments.
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