Street Fight Daily: Lyft Seeks $500 Million in New Funding, Snap Values Itself at $24B on Eve of IPO
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Lyft Seeking At Least $500 Million in New Funding (WSJ)
Uber Technologies Inc.’s recent stumbles over a string of unwelcome events are giving its ride-hailing rival Lyft Inc. a chance to seize the moment.
Foursquare Releases Pilgrim SDK, Allowing Third Parties to Access Its Location Intel (Street Fight)
Apps and brands can now get their hands on some of the technology Foursquare uses to pinpoint where smartphones are in real-time — and get a clearer picture of when people move from location to location.
Snap Officially Sets Stock Price at $17, Raising $3.4 Billion in IPO (VentureBeat)
For context, Facebook priced its stock at $38 per share and raised $16 billion in its IPO in 2012. Twitter priced its stock at $26 per share and raised $1.8 billion in its IPO in 2013.
5 Ways Brick-and-Mortar Merchants Can Utilize On-Demand Services (Street Fight)
Businesses that sell physical goods are discovering that they can cut costs and increase services for their customers by forming partnerships with on-demand apps rather than competing on their own. Here are five examples of ways that brick-and-mortar businesses can start utilizing on-demand services.
Instacart to Raise $400 Million as Other On-Demand Startups Die Around It (Business Insider)
It’s a massive fundraise for a company in a space that has slowed down significantly. While the on-demand — “Uber for everything startups” — used to be the hot tech investments, funding to companies that bring anything at the touch of the button has dramatically decreased in the last two and a half years.
Local News Is Struggling — But Handouts From Digital Giants Aren’t the Answer (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: Two very smart thinkers about the future of American journalism have called for Facebook and other hugely prosperous digital enterprises to pay reparations for what their success is allegedly costing journalism and democracy. I’ve worked in journalism all my life, but I don’t buy these arguments.
One of Facebook Messenger’s First Retail Partners Has Ditched It as a Notification Tool (Recode)
Everlane emailed customers to let them know that it is discontinuing using the messaging platform as a notification tool. “It was a good couple of years, but we’ve decided to stick with what we do best — email,” the note read.
Chat App Line is Developing an AI Assistant and Echo-Style Smart Speaker (TechCrunch)
Messaging app Line is taking a leaf out of the books of Amazon, Google and others after it launched its own artificial intelligence platform. A voice-powered concierge service called Clova — short for “Cloud Virtual Assistant” — is the centerpiece of the service.
Yahoo’s Top Lawyer Resigns and CEO Loses Bonus in Wake of Hack (NYT)
Senior executives, company lawyers, and information security staff were aware of the hack in 2014 and also knew about subsequent attempts to break into the affected accounts in 2015 and 2016, but failed to “properly comprehend or investigate” the situation.
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