Street Fight Daily: Snap Valuation Jumps to $34 Billion, SMBs Shift Marketing Spend to Digital
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Snapchat Shares Surge 44% in Market Debut (WSJ)
Snap Inc. shares soared on the first day of trading Thursday in an initial public offering that will likely hand the disappearing-message app’s founders, investors and underwriters big profits and provide a boost for the sluggish new-issue market. Digiday: As Snapchat Goes Public, Marketers Air Concerns
Openings and New Hires at Okanjo, Factual, Bing Maps (Street Fight)
Every two weeks, Geoff Michener covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. This week’s edition includes moves and new openings at Pandora, LotLinx, and Kobe Digital.
Small Businesses Shift Marketing Spend to Digital (eMarketer)
U.S. SMBs are planning to spend more on social media marketing in 2017. But it’s not just social channels that are seeing more marketing dollars. More SMBs plan to invest a bigger portion of their overall marketing budgets in digital formats—thanks, in part, to growing economic optimism.
Street Culture: Tech Startups Amping Up Opportunities for Women (Street Fight)
For many locally focused tech companies — including NextDoor, SweetIQ, ibotta and G/O Digital — transparent sharing and openness at all levels is inviting a new workplace generation led by women.
For Quartz, Bots Are a Chance to Build a New Path for Interacting with News (Nieman Lab)
The Bot Studio, which is funded by a $240,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, will focus on two main areas: how bots and artificial intelligence can help journalists do their jobs better and how news consumers can use them to access news and information.
YP.com CEO Jared Rowe: We Will ‘Go Deep,’ Leverage Scale (Local Onliner)
Peter Krasilovsky: The YP CEO painted a picture of a company with an enviable customer base, unmatched number of feet on the street, and a technology platform that is poised to deliver the highest number of leads at the lowest cost for advertisers — especially those that are focused on high-end, considered purchases.
Google’s Highly Advanced Assistant May Make a Push Into the iPhone (Business Insider)
At this weekend’s Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Google product management director Gummi Hafsteinsson suggested that the search giant’s flagship virtual assistant may be making its way to the world’s most popular smartphone.
GM’s New Maven Reserve Service Offers Monthly Vehicle Rentals (TechCrunch)
Alternative models to car ownership now abound, and GM’s putting one more on the table: Maven Reserve, an offering within its Maven on-demand rental service that lets users rent new GM cars for 28 days at a time, complete with parking, insurance and $100 in gas credit.
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