SXSW: With Pivot, Zaarly’s Focus Shifts to Merchants
Zaarly rolled out its “storefronts” initiative last fall, and soon will completely drop the consumer-generated request model it was founded around to shift entirely to a storefront selling approach. From a hyperlocal marketing perspective, one of the most profound effects of this is the way Zaarly is now counting on sellers to bring in buyers…
Street Fight Daily: Zaarly Pivots, Can Hyperlocal Scale?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Zaarly Shutters Its Reverse Craigslist Marketplace, Goes All In On Virtual Storefronts As Co-Founder Exits (TechCrunch)… Hyperlocal Cooties (Buzz Machine)… NY Daily News Releases City Guide App With MyCityWay (AdWeek)…
Zaarly Expands Local Marketplace With ‘Storefronts’
A little less than year after raising $14 million in series A funding and adding HP CEO Meg Whitman to its board, Zaarly has pushed out the next iteration of its local marketplace this morning. Called Storefronts, the product provides verified sellers with curated brand pages, where buyers can browse services, engage with content about the provider, and begin to build relationships with the individuals behind the services…
Turf Talk Redux: Looking for the Future in Companies, People, and Products
I like to be a little out in front of things. Not too far (hyperloops) and not too close (digital couponing). In my writing about local marketing and media (both here at Street Fight, and previously), I’ve generally been most comfortable investigating advancements that attempt to intersect the possible and the inevitable. For instance: the […]
5 Local Marketplaces for Housecleaners
Marketplaces aimed at providing consumers with easy ways to quickly find and book local housecleaners and home services providers are heating up, with frontrunners like Handy and Homejoy enjoying major investments from well-known venture firms like Revolution (led by AOL co-founder Steve Case and Groupon chairman Ted Leonisis), Google Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures. Here are […]
The Local Sharing Economy Is Here (But Scale Will Prove Difficult)
Every iteration of things that can be shared, from baby clothes to power boats, has been picked through by college students who have been steeped in the gospel of Zuck and turned into a local service set to scale. The problem, however, is that almost every startup gets stuck at city one. The reason? If the sharing requires some sort of physical exchange of goods or services, then it requires the commitment of two people who live close to each other to complete transaction. And they need to find each other even though the just-launched app won’t reach critical mass for a long time…
In Rush to Local Services, Thumbtack Nabs $12.5M Series B
The investment dollars keep flowing for companies in the local services space. Two months after scheduling firm Booker nabbed 27.5 million from Bain, Thumbtack, a startup that has built a reverse Craigslist for local services, has raised 12.5 million from Sequoia Capital in a series B round, bringing its total funding to a little over $18 million…
Why Marketplaces Fail, and How to Make Them Work in Local
Earlier this spring, Andrei Hagiu, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, published a piece in the Harvard Business Review looking at why marketplaces fail. Based on recent research, Hagiu, and his co-author Julian Wright, broke down the various pitfalls of building a marketplace, concluding that on the continuum between multi-sided platform and reseller, most businesses fell closer to the reseller end of the spectrum…
How Consumer Messaging Is Going From ‘Push’ to ‘Pull’
The biggest battle coming in the world of marketing is a 180-degree shift in the routing of commerce-related messages. Today, we call them “advertisements,” one-directional messages FROM somebody with something to sell TO somebody who may potentially be a buyer. Tomorrow, the messages will come FROM those wishing to buy TO those with something to sell…
Street Fight Daily: Google Upgrades Places, PlaceIQ Tracks In-Store Visits
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Google Upgrades Its Google Places Dashboard With Google+ Local Integration (Search Engine Land)… SMG to Track How Mobile Ads Lead to In-store Visits (AdAge)… Local.com Launches Premium National-Local Ad Network (Screenwerk)…
6 Marketplace Platforms for Local Buyers
Limited-time promotions are an effective way to generate immediate customer demand, but what happens once the hype is over and the deal is complete? To counteract their one-and-done reputations and give merchants a way to extend their promotions, a number of hyperlocal companies are developing local marketplace platforms with more opportunities for long-tail marketing…
Street Fight Daily: Google Delivers Same-Day, Local Search on Mobile
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Google Shopping Express Test Partners Include Target And Other Local SF Stores (TechCrunch)… Only 29% Of Consumers Regularly Use Mobile Devices To Find Local Businesses (Search Engine Land)… Retailer Enthusiasm for Mobile Payments Tempered by Power Struggles in Industry (Mobile Commerce Daily)…
Zaarly: Toll Taker on a ‘Buyer-Powered Commerce’ Highway?
Zaarly – it’s not a new verb expressing something extra cool. Not yet, anyway. But it’s got a pretty good start if you’re judging by its remarkable first two months alone. In that time they’ve pitched and launched the product, wowed celebrity judges at a startup competition in LA and accepted a million bucks in seed funding from, among others, Ashton Kutcher and venture fund Lightbank created by Groupon’s founders. And that’s all before the semi-official launch at SXSW or making a single dime.
Street Fight recently caught up with with the 32-year-old CEO behind this i-need-it-you-got-it service, Bo Fishback…