Street Fight Daily: Uber Nears $2B in Revenue, Twitter Ads Get More Reach

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…

Leaked Doc: Uber Nears $2 Billion in Revenue, Expects IPO in 18-24 Months (Recode)
Uber projects it will process $10.84 billion in bookings this year, based on an investor presentation leaked to Reuters. Since Uber takes a 20 percent cut of each ride, that means it will bring in roughly over $2 billion in revenue. Its 2016 projection numbers are nearly triple that.

Twitter Gives Promoted Tweets and Video Ads More Mobile Reach (AdWeek)
Marketers can now run Promoted Tweets and Promoted Videos on other mobile apps on the Twitter Audience Platform, a renaming of Twitter’s year-old publishing network. Until now, the network was only for mobile app-install ads. Advertisers can extend the same creative and data targeting they use for tweets and videos to other apps, and consumers will be able to retweet and favorite the ads when they appear on other sites.

Why Social Recommendations Are Vital for Local Online Marketplaces (Street Fight)
Yoav Schwartz: There can be little disagreement that building a word-of-mouth platform is difficult. But if social recommendations are the gold standard, why should we expect users to pick solutions that provide the convenience of scheduling and booking but lack the trust of word-of-mouth?

Facebook Has Taken Over From Google as a Traffic Source for News (Fortune)
Mathew Ingram: Anyone who works for a major news website or publisher knows that social referrals have become a crucial source of incoming traffic, and have been vying with search as a source of new readers for some time. Now, according to new numbers from the traffic-analytics service Parse.ly, Facebook is no longer just vying with Google but has overtaken it by a significant amount.

Raise Roundup: Massdrop, Mogl, Kik, Zocdoc Score Robust Rounds (Street Fight)
Every two weeks we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. In this edition, new investments include big votes of confidence for Revel Systems, Massdrop, and Peach.

Do Brand Marketers Really Use Those Mobile Apps for Real-Time Analytics? (AdWeek)
Are brand marketers really sneaking peeks at engagement metrics or conversion rates while waiting for a taxi? The answer is “yes” for brands like Coke, General Motors, Procter & Gamble and the Chicago Bulls, all of which recently began using Unmetric’s app, Sense, for on-the-go intelligence.

Search App Vurb Adds Messaging To Become The U.S. WeChat (TechCrunch)
WeChat dominates China with its messaging hub that lets you shop, call a taxi, and pay bills — all from one app. Now, mobile search startup Vurb wants to bring the monolithic app style to the United States.

Bing Beats Google “Now On Tap” To Android With New “Bing Snapshots” (Search Engine Land)
Bing has announced that what the company calls “Snapshots” will deliver contextually relevant search information for any app installed on your Android device. The pitch to consumers is: Get “answers” and enhanced content without leaving the app.

Could Weather Co. Sale Lead to Digital, TV Being Split? (AdAge)
Owners of the Weather Channel have hired the banks Morgan Stanley and PJT Partners to explore a sale. Preliminary discussions have taken place with technology and media companies, and the company is considering selling only its digital business, which has a much higher value than the cable network.

Retailers See Gains in Serving E-Commerce Supply Chains (Wall Street Journal)
The largest U.S. retailers reported strong online sales in their second-quarter earnings reports this week, extending a trend that has seen e-commerce revenue expand far faster than store sales, and several said they are making strides in delivering goods to consumers more profitably.

The New York Times Won’t Skimp on the Cost of Journalism — Even if That Means Selling Itself (Recode)
The Times, if it had to, could cut larger swaths of its editorial staff and still produce great journalism, but then it would be a very different paper. As a former insider put it, “the Sulzbergers don’t want to do the Los Angeles Times thing,” meaning a reshaped ambition under a smaller newsroom.

Swarm 3.0, Over-gamified, Missed Its Chance With Me (TheNextWeb)
Lauren Hockenson: Foursquare is reintroducing gamified features that the company called arbitrary in a post about why they were dropping gamified features for Swarm in the first place. It took roughly a year, but it seems that Foursquare finally got the hint that without something to keep Swarm sticky, no one will stay.

Retailers See Gains in Serving E-Commerce Supply Chains (eMarketer)
Respondents were far and away more likely to buy clothing in-store. Fully 55.0% of respondents said they primarily purchased clothing in a physical store, vs. 21.2% who said the same about digital. Women overindexed for in-store buying, while males were slightly more likely than females to check out online.

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