Why Apple Maps Is Partnering With Local Search Companies

Share this:

Last week, after I uncovered that Apple Maps had cut deals with at least ten new companies (including Yext, Location3, Yodle, et cetera) to provide business listings data, I got a few emails asking what the big deal was. Here’s what I see is going on…

For AmEx’s Small Business Saturday, A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Share this:

Between 2007 to 2010, the rate of small business growth in the U.S. dropped by more than 12% annually. Fast forward five years, and the small business sector is showing signs of a comeback…

LBMA Podcast: Groupon Acquires Swarm, Lord & Taylor Deploys Beacons

Share this:

On the show: LINKNYC replaces payphones with WiFi in NYC; Radio Shack goes back to its roots with Little Bits; LivingSocial lets merchants in on the deal; Snapchat partners with Square; Spotify partners with Uber; Target Partners with PointInside; Shazam partners with Adspace Networks; WholeFoods creates deeper local engagement with in-store kiosks in Atlanta…

Street Fight Daily: Twitter Adds Offers, Uber Eyes $40B Valuation

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Twitter Introduces Offers: Discounts You Claim in Tweets and Redeem in Stores (Recode)… Uber Said Poised to Raise Funds Showing $40 Billion Value (Bloomberg)… Clinkle Is Bribing College Students With a Vending Machine Full of Cash (ValleyWag)…

Study: 6 of 10 Shoppers Engage With Beacon Messaging

Share this:

A new study shows that 60% of shoppers open and engage with beacon-triggered content, and 30% of shoppers redeem beacon-triggered offers at the point of purchase. Another 73% of shoppers surveyed said that beacon-triggered content and offers increased the likelihood that they would make a purchase during their store visit…

Meet Pager: The App That Calls Local Doctors To Your Living Room

Share this:

The house call, once a staple of American medicine, is now typically reserved for the small set of wealthy clientele willing to pay out-of-pocket for a home visit. But a startup in New York believes that an evolving healthcare system paired with an increasingly delivery-friendly consumer may create the right environment for on-demand medicine…

Street Fight Daily: Amazon Enters Home Services, eBay Kills Same-Day Delivery

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Amazon Promotes Handyman and Installation Services (Recode)… Ebay Now Pulled From App Store As Company Rethinks Its Same-Day Delivery Plans (TechCrunch)… It’s Not Just About Print Vs. Digital Media — It’s About Culture (GigaOm)…

A ‘Radical Transformation’ Is Brewing in SMB Phones

Share this:

For local businesses that rely on the phone for inbound leads (which is nearly all of them), the functionality of copper lines pales in comparison to what call-tracking-enabled lines have done for years. Unfortunately for business owners, the VoIP packages being sold to them also fall far short of the level of functionality that call tracking provides…

Creating a “Local Service Layer” — To Build or To Buy?

Share this:

The question of “buy or build” is everywhere in technology, and for something as important as brand integrity, it is paramount to making the right choice. Marketers can use cloud software to empower local affiliates to evangelize the brand in a controlled environment while using data to localize messaging in an automated way…

6 Tools SMBs Without Websites Can Use to Sell Online

Share this:

Understanding that many SMBs don’t have a business website, a number of hyperlocal vendors have introduced platforms that give merchants a way to participate in e-commerce and sell their wares online. Here are six examples of tools that merchants can try…

Street Fight Daily: Yik Yak Raises $62M, Square Accepts Apple Pay

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Messaging App Yik Yak Tipped For $62M Funding A Year After Launch (Guardian)… Apple Pay Could Be Coming To Small Businesses, Thanks To Square (Gizmodo)… Investors: Damn Ubergate and Full Speed Ahead With Mega-Funding (Recode)…

Study: 1 in 10 Mobile Ad Impressions in Retail Leads to a Store Visit

Share this:

xAd released a report this week detailing some new findings about the way mobile ads influence store visits in the auto, retail and restaurant industry. The results show the increasing importance of connecting online mobile activities to offline conversions and store visitation.

Openings and New Hires at LoyalBlocks, Showroom Logic and JUICE Mobile

Share this:

Every two weeks, Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, new jobs and hires at Colony Logic, Marquette Group, Skyhook, and more…

LBMA Podcast: Facebook Challenges Yelp and Foursquare

Share this:

On the show: Connected Glass by Rebecca Minkoff; The world’s smallest GPS chip; Pay with your face; Coupons.com on your Samsung phone; and SocialRadar acquires Gridskippr. Our special guest is Rob Cameron, Chief Product and Marketing Office at Moneris…

Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Renews IPO Push, Amazon Eyes Hotels

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…GoDaddy Seeks Nearly $4.5b IPO Valuation, Talks Diversifying (New York Post)… Amazon to Get Into Hotel Booking With Launch of Travel Site (Skift)… Leaked Internal Uber Deck Reveals Staggering Revenue And Growth Metrics (Business Insider)…

Best Practices in the Cloud-Based “Local Service Layer” for National-to-Local

Share this:

Thanks to evolving tech tools, national marketers are in a powerful position to harness their web of data to deepen their relationships with consumers via their local agents. Best practices set a baseline of data, create a parent-child structure, monitor performance — and iterate, iterate, iterate…

Brooklyn Site’s Loyalty Pitch Tries to Answer: ‘How Many Customers Did You Bring Me?’

Share this:

A soon-to-be launched section in Bushwick Daily — called Village — will seek to build more and deeper connections between residents and merchants of Bushwick. The centerpiece of Village is an in-house loyalty program where users will get a bonus when they make their first purchase. If they become a frequent customer, they get another bonus and a Foursquare-type badge…

What Do The Internet and Your Commute Have In Common? A Lot More Than You Think.

Share this:

A handful of ex-engineers from Google and a specialist from Stanford want to take their learning from playing traffic cop on the web to solve the congestion problems plaguing some of the world’s business cities. Their insights into managing congestion at Urban Engines could have valuable lessons for managing local commerce…

Street Fight Daily: Senator Probes Uber, Apple Maps Adds Partners

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Senator Questions Uber on Privacy Practices (New York Times)… Apple Maps Announces New Business Listings Data Partners (Mac Rumors)… Reviewers Mostly Positive, 67% on Yelp Are Either 4 or 5 Stars (Screenwerk)…

Case Study: MEDIATA Sees 20% Campaign Lift Through Skyhook Partnership

Share this:

In an effort to reduce wasted spend, MEDIATA partnered with leading location network Skyhook, testing its Hyperlocal IP feature. Skyhook has differentiated itself from other IP positioning providers by taking an empirical approach to location. Rather than inferring IP address positions using network topology—a notoriously inefficient and inaccurate method used by many competing firms—Skyhook takes advantage of their global database of ground-truth locations, which have been assigned to IP addresses…