Street Fight Daily: Square IPO Looms, Amazon Plans Drive-Up Grocery Stores
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Square’s Filing Turns Talk to Dorsey’s Juggling Skills (New York Times)
Jack Dorsey has filed confidential paperwork to sell stock to the public in Square, where he’s CEO. Dorsey has also taken on the challenge of turning around Twitter, the site that he co-founded and was asked to run as interim chief executive.
Amazon Planning Drive-Up Grocery Stores With the First Likely Coming to Sunnyvale (Silicon Valley Business Journal)
Amazon is developing a new drive-up store concept in Silicon Valley that will allow consumers to order grocery items online, then schedule a pickup at a dedicated facility.
Why the Contractor-Employee Conundrum Isn’t a Fatal Liability for the On-Demand Economy (Street Fight)
Parag Jain: The recent California Labor Commission ruling classifying one Uber driver as an employee has led to a lot of chatter about cracks in the business model underlying the “on-demand economy.” But let’s analyze the facts at hand further before we come to any conclusions.
Instagram Mobile Ad Revenues to Reach $2.81 Billion Worldwide in 2017 (eMarketer)
In a sign of just how quickly Instagram is expected to grow in the US, eMarketer forecasts that it will have higher net mobile display ad revenues than both Google and Twitter in 2017.
Technical.ly Finds Big Revenues in Niche Markets Along the Mid-Atlantic (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: Growing quickly in five different cities along the Northeast Corridor, Technical.ly focuses its content and events on local tech startups and the personalities driving them. Its substantial revenues have put the company among the top “indie” hyperlocals.
Yelp Cries Foul at Google’s Mobile App Ad Declaration (Recode)
Last week Google said it would retire interstitial ads and asked the rest of the mobile Internet to do the same. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman came out against the announcement, accusing Google of a double standard (running its own app ads while nixing others) and highlighting the suspicion percolating in the mobile industry that Google is trying to replicate its Web search position with apps.
Sponsored Post: Ad Improvements Could Strengthen Local Appeal of Costco, Sam’s Club (Street Fight)
Members of the wholesale retail chains Sam’s Club and Costco swear by the low costs that come with buying in bulk, and locations cater their offerings to the local market. But these two companies could take a fresh look at their branding strategies and interactions with customers.
Even The Biggest Brands Can Get Hyperlocal With Geolocation Targeting (MarketingLand)
Andy Lombard: Many brands are now tweaking their national marketing campaigns on a store-by-store basis, localizing email blasts and regularly pushing out notifications about in-store promotions though multichannel and geolocation marketing.
McClatchy Reports Precipitous Print Ad Declines Again for Second Quarter (Poynter)
McClatchy is first among the public newspapers to report for the second quarter, and drops of nearly the same magnitude seem likely at other companies. As Gannett (which will report Wednesday) indicated as it spun off to a separate newspaper company a month ago, second quarter ad revenues have been weak there as well.
The Impact of Online Reviews on Customers’ Buying Decisions [Infographic] (Business 2 Community)
The latest statistics and trends show that 90% of consumers read online reviews and 88% of them trust the online reviews as much as personal recommendations. In other words, more people read reviews as part of their pre-purchase research before buying a product or service.
Handy, a Hot Startup for Home Cleaning, Has a Big Mess of Its Own (Slate)
Alison Griswold: Handy is unquestionably a savvy young company, one that has conjured a valuable new business out of thin air. But I learned that its ascent in the so-called 1099 economy has been a bumpy one — for its users, its employees, and for the independent contractors who actually do the cleaning.
Google Will Shut Down Abandoned Google+ Local Pages on July 28 (The Next Web)
Though it makes sense for Google to jettison pages not in use, it’s also a curious uncoupling of Plus from local search (and it’s not the first Plus-y thing to be shut down lately). It seems the era of Google+ being the ‘social spine’ that runs through the company is shuttering as well.
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