Street Fight Daily: Facebook Rethinks Location, Yahoo Kills Maps
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Facebook Messenger Updates Location Sharing. Is Uber Integration Next? (Recode)
Facebook’s standalone Messenger app changed the way users can share their location with friends, and the update seemingly paves the way for more features to come. Messenger’s product management lead Stan Chudnovsky described the new location sharing as “a foundation” for other features the team is looking to build.
Tomorrowland: How AOL’s Digital City Foreshadowed More Than the Future of Local (Street Fight)
Rick Robinson: Creating and operating city guides for all major U.S. markets turned out to be something of a cover. What we were really doing was running a skunkworks project with few boundaries on creativity — where success or “failing-fast” were not the goals.
Yahoo Maps Hits A Dead End, Shutting Down End Of This Month (Search Engine Land)
Yahoo has announced changes to several of its products and services, but the biggest surprise is that the company is shutting down Yahoo Maps at the end of this month after an eight-year run. Yahoo will still show mapping within their services but it won’t necessarily be powered off their own mapping service.
Openings and New Hires at VendAsta, Instacart, Kantar, Microsoft and HTC (Street Fight)
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 SocialCentiv, PageLaunch, Comporium and Thrive Analytics.
This Ad Tech Company is Boosting its Image by Partnering with Foursquare (Fortune)
Drawbridge, a four-year-old ad tech company from San Francisco, making some noise about a new round of partnerships is all about gaining more public legitimacy and validation for its technology and products. The latest deal: powering Foursquare’s new advertising network, Pinpoint.
Google Says It May Unverify Inactive Local Business Listings (Search Engine Land)
Local businesses that haven’t logged in to their Google My Business account in a while will risk having those listings unverified, a Google representative confirmed today. Google’s Jade Wang confirmed that the company is contacting some Google My Business users that it considers to be inactive.
European Salon Booking Site Wahanda Buys Dutch Rival Treatwell For $38M (TechCrunch)
After a $46 million cash injection and a $171 million majority acquisition by Japan’s Recruit Holdings last month, Wahanda, the StyleSeat-esque European salon booking platform, is continuing with its strategy to scale up its business. It has acquired Treatwell for $38 million.
GeoMinds: Small Business, Big Opportunity: Why SMBs Should Harness the Power of Programmatic (GeoMarketing)
Mark Goldman: Programmatic is claiming a growing share of marketing budgets because it’s efficient, flexible and scalable, and it doesn’t matter whether your brand is global, national or local. But it’s small and mid-sized businesses that stand to gain the most from embracing programmatic advertising.
In-Store Tech? Shoppers Want It at the Checkout (eMarketer)
According to March 2015 polling by CFI Group, nearly two-thirds of US internet users have used self-checkout registers at the front of a retail store. That compared with just 20% who had scanned items at kiosks around the interior of the store, and 17% who had checked out with a sales associate roaming around the store.
LBMA Podcast: Apple Acquires Metaio, Interview With Kontakt.io’s Trevor Longino (Street Fight)
On the show: The contagious billboard; Ubimo and Autograph raise rounds; Carrefour’s 2.5km of LED location lights; XploR smart cane with facial recognition; AdNear and Roy Morgan partner; Shazam everything; Tweeting potholes; Sell advertising in your home windows.
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