Street Fight Daily: What Dorsey’s Twitter Gig Means For Square, Google to Roll Out ‘Now on Tap’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Jack Dorsey’s Dual CEO Role Raises Questions for Square (New York Times)
Jack Dorsey’s appointment as permanent CEO of Twitter leaves the other company he runs, payments startup Square, in a thorny situation. He will divide his time between the two just as Square is preparing for an IPO that could come before the end of the year.
Editor’s Take: The Perils of Uberization for the Local Economy (Street Fight)
Noah Elkin: On-demand is a convenient rubric for speaking about a certain type of currently faddish platform, but not every underlying service or product is the same. Transportation is not the same as home services or restaurants; by extension, not everything Uber does will work equally well outside of its particular niche. Demand-based pricing is a prime example.
Now on Tap, Google’s Mobile Search Trojan Horse, Is Out of the Gate (Recode)
In May, Google unboxed Now on Tap, a feature designed to smooth out what the company sees as a clunky, closed-off world of apps. It will start rolling out soon.
Urgent.ly’s Spanos: On-Demand Is How Everybody’s Going to Get Service for Everything (Street Fight)
“I’ve long been a believer that on-demand is going to revolutionize every service sector in the economy. There will be different flavors of it, based on the characteristics of particular verticals. Five years from now, this is how everybody’s going to get service for everything,” said Urgent.ly CEO Chris Spanos.
Pinterest Expands Buyable Pins to More Ecommerce Platforms, Reaching Thousands of Merchants (TechCrunch)
Pinterest announced it’s expanding the reach of its “Buyable Pins” — which allow users to make purchases directly on Pinterest — to several more ecommerce platforms. With the addition, Pinterest says that thousands of new merchants will be able to offer their products and services to the social site’s users.
Case Study: Hotel Attracts Luxury Travelers with Guest-Facing Mobile Tech (Street Fight)
As London’s boutique Lanesborough Hotel began what would become a 19-month, multi-million dollar refurbishment in 2014, executives started looking for strategic ways to appeal to guests with luxury tastes. To go along with the newly renovated rooms, which reopened in July, the team decided to add a technology component that would be unlike anything travelers had ever experienced.
Mobile Is Still a Missing Piece for Local Indie Online News Publishers (Nieman Lab)
The LION Summit for local online news publishers took place over the weekend, but in two days of panels, there was little focus on mobile strategy, especially as it relates to advertising. Local publishers’ reliance on banner ads is “scary,” said Michele McLellan, the founder of Michele’s List, a database of local news sites.
These Plucky Startup Founders Want to Beat Apple and Google at Geolocation (Technical.ly DC)
When a startup called Parkour Method first launched in 2013, ad networks interested in tracking consumer habits soon took up its geolocation technology. But the founders had bigger plans. They didn’t want to just make a cutting-edge marketing tool; they wanted to change how we navigate the world with our smartphones.
Retailers See Benefits from Beacons (eMarketer)
Though retailers have been quicker than other firms to implement Internet of Things devices and applications, beacons are still somewhat rare; just 29 percent of retailers surveyed worldwide had implemented in-store beacon tech. But one trend that holds: Retailers that have adopted beacons are satisfied with them.
Get Street Fight Daily in your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletter.
