Street Fight Daily: Facebook Brings Stories to Flagship App, Voice Assistant Adoption Climbs

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

Facebook Brings Stories to Its Flagship App (VentureBeat)
On Tuesday, the social networking company announced the global rollout of Facebook Stories, the ephemeral storytelling mechanism that lives right above the News Feed. Now basically there’s no escaping Snapchat Stories no matter which app you’re using. This feature is only available through Facebook’s mobile app.

Blis Forecasts Where Consumers Will Be — Then Targets Ads Based on That Prediction (Street Fight)
The company is unveiling a new service that it claims can figure out where consumers will likely go — and target mobile ads based on those expectations. Blis Futures uses artificial intelligence to identify patterns about where consumers are likely to spend time, and then focuses brands’ marketing to reach them at optimal moments.

Voice Assistants Now Reach 12% of U.S. Households (MediaPost)
The adoption rate of smart speakers with voice assistants grew from 5% of U.S. broadband households in 2015 to 12% last year, according to a new study by Parks Associates.

Affinity Solutions Launches Tool to Predict Future Purchase Outcomes (Street Fight)
Tech firms are working at a feverish pace to crack the code when it comes to predictive marketing, as brands demand more detailed insights into consumers’ future purchasing behaviors. The latest effort into this arena comes from Affinity Solutions, which is launching its Purchase-Driven Marketing Cloud today.

Payment Company Square Launches in the UK (Reuters)
The San Francisco-based company said on Tuesday that small-and medium-sized businesses in the U.K. would be able to use Square’s credit card reader to accept payments on mobile devices. 

Retailers as ‘Hyperlocal Shoppable Destinations’ (Local Onliner)
Target is working to make its stores “hyperlocal shoppable destinations,” said CEO Brian Cornell. It is remodeling hundreds of stores for “inspiration and ease,” and using digital and ecommerce to enhance their appeal via Pinterest groups, online ordering, store pickup and other digital features.

Geopath Taps Tech from Citilabs for Audience Location Measurement (Street Fight)
Nonprofit organization Geopath, previously known as the Traffic Audit Bureau for Media Measurement, has announced it will use software from Citilabs to power an audience location measurement solution for out-of-home advertisers.

Amazon’s Store of the Future is Delayed (Recode)
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company won’t open the first store, in Seattle, by the end of this month like the company had originally planned. The store is currently only open to Amazon employees; Amazon has said it would open to the public in “early 2017.” 

Uber Restarts Self-Driving Passenger Pilots in Arizona and Pittsburgh (TechCrunch)
Uber has confirmed that all its autonomous test cars are now back on the road in the US, following an accident in Arizona on Friday evening that left one of its vehicles flipped on its side. 

The Race to Rule the High-Flying Business of Satellite Imagery (Wired)
More satellites than ever are setting their sights on the world, taking millions of images and yielding even more megabytes. All of that data does no good unless someone can make sense of it, and fast.

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