Street Fight Daily: Square Orders Ahead, StubHub’s Editorial Strategy
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Square Rolls Out Order App, Targets Coffee Shops (Bloomberg)
Square is rolling out a new mobile application aimed at satisfying caffeine addicts who are in a hurry by taking much of the waiting and paying out of the purchase of a cup of coffee. The Square Order app will tell a barista to start preparing a brew as soon as a user approaches a shop.
Mike Shapiro’s TAP Gets New Branding and a Network Strategy (Street Fight)
The six-year-old Alternative Press (TAP) network of community news sites in suburban New Jersey and Pennsylvania has a new name — TAPinto.net — and a new look. It also has a new strategy aimed at leveraging content and audience reach across TAPinto’s sites, 32 of which are franchisees.
Stubhub Hires Its First Editor-in-Chief, Looks to Become a Destination For Sports and Music Fans (PandoDaily)
Jonah Freedman, a former Sports Illustrated editor, is joining StubHub as the company’s first Editor in Chief. The appointment is part of a newly conceived editorial strategy aimed at making StubHub a destination for information, culture, and commerce around the best events each city and region have to offer.
Poncho, a Weather App That Speaks for Itself (Street Fight)
The year-old company only has six full-time employees, but it has accrued “tens of thousands of subscribers” due in part to word of mouth and an effective referral program. And according to the founder of Poncho, Kuan Huang, that user base is engaged, with an email open rate of 50%.
Pull Over, Google Maps: Nokia Here Maps Zooms on to Samsung Galaxy Phones (GigaOm)
Google Maps has long been the navigation method of choice on Android phones so does Nokia’s HERE Maps have a chance to change that? Absolutely thanks to far better offline mapping capabilities shown in this comparison video on the Galaxy S5.
Vertical Markets, Mobile Transactions and the ‘Unbundling of Local’ (Local Search insider)
Viewed from a slightly broader perspective, the success of marketplaces such as BloomLocal is the potential appearance of another vertical brand that connects buyers and sellers and offers SaaS-based tools and services to help independent florists better market and manage their businesses. Call it the “unbundling of local” 2.0.
Facebook’s New Local Mobile Advertising Play Could be a Game-Changer (New York Business Journal)
This basic concept is a longstanding part of the business model at Yelp and Foursquare, which from the beginning bet on location and user intent as a powerful combination for retail or hospitality venues. But this is another case where Facebook’s sheer size and detailed, apparently accurate user-submitted data can be a force.
Line Dives Head First into Payments, Taxi Hailing, and On-Demand Food Delivery (Tech Asia)
Takeshi Idezawa, COO of Line, kicked off his presentation at Line Conference Tokyo 2014 today with a simple message. “The keyword of our future is ‘life.’ Line is the smartphone gateway for your life.” Line’s push to bridge the gap between its users’ online and offline lives is crystallized in a bold new offering – Line Pay.
How Foursquare Made The Bold Decision To Split Its Product In Two, And How Both Apps Have Been Doing Since (Business Insider)
The decision to unbundle Foursquare seems to be validated. Foursquare is seeing one-third of users exclusively use Swarm, one-third of users exclusively use the new Foursquare, and one-third of its users using both apps. Those usage patterns are the whole reason Foursquare decided to split itself apart in December.
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