AARP Launches Platform Empowering Neighbors to Assist Each Other during Pandemic

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Built by the team at AARP Innovation Labs over the course of just a few weeks, the Community Connections mutual aid aggregation platform gives volunteers and people in need a place to connect. It features a searchable directory of local mutual aid organizations, which are typically informal groups that provide key daily services, such as picking up groceries and delivering medications to people who are at high risk for contracting Covid-19. People can access the platform to find volunteer groups nearby, with links to those groups’ websites and locator maps.

Businesses Find Opportunities to Fundraise, Connect Through Local Platforms

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Consumers say they want to help the local businesses in their communities, and many are buying gift cards and launching GoFundMe campaigns to help their favorite restaurants, retailers, and brewpubs avoid going out of business. But restaurants and other essential businesses that remain open still need a way to let customers know how they’re selling their products and services, and how they can place orders without showing up in person.

The neighborhood social networking app Nextdoor is one of a number of platforms working on ways to ease that burden. Yelp, Facebook, and Patch are joining the fight.

How Patch Has Quietly ‘Bootstrapped’ Itself Into 36 NYC Neighborhoods

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Patch CEO Warren St. John tells our columnist Tom Grubisich why he decided to bet big on hyperlocal news in New York City while other local publishers were shutting down or threatening to do so, retrenching or selling out.

Street Fight Daily: Amazon Courts Ad Buyers, B2B Marketers Unprepared for GDPR

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Triopoly Time? Amazon Preps New Attribution Tool and Courts Ad Buyers… Forrester Says Only 15% of B2B Marketers Are Fully Compliant with GDPR… Google Will Prioritize Stories for Paying News Subscribers…

Street Fight Daily: Whole Foods Prices Cut for Prime Members, How Patch Makes Local Profitable

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon and Whole Foods Reveal New Price Cuts for Prime Members… How Patch’s CEO Makes Hyperlocal Profitable… Google Maps Gets a Redesign…

Street Fight Daily: Walmart Still Hungry for Startups, Kohl’s Makes Deal With Devil

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… To Keep Up with Tech Competitors, Walmart Says It Will Acquire More Startups… Amazon’s Invasion of Kohl’s Has Begun… Facebook Is Officially Rolling Out Explore, Its Alternative News Feed…

Patch’s Leader Says the Network Today Is Proof That Local Can Scale

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Warren St. John, who has led Hale Global’s Patch since its 2015 takeover from Aol., says the network has evolved into a workable model for scaled local news — editorially, financially and as a community asset. In this Q & A, he presents his case.

Street Fight Daily: Postmates Sheds Employees, What Oath CEO Learned from Leading Patch

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Postmates Laid Off All Its Cities Managers This Week… What Oath CEO Tim Armstrong Learned from Patch’s Struggles… Amazon Pumps Resources into Alexa to Maintain Dominance as Competition Heats Up…

Street Fight Daily: As Echo Upgrades, Microsoft Releases Rival, Deliveroo Eats Up Competitor Maple

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Plans to Unveil New Echo… Food Delivery Startup Maple Shuts Down and Sells to Deliveroo After Raising $29 Million… Now Profitable, Patch Wants to Be a Platform for Other Local News Outlets…

Street Fight Daily: Yelp Data Now Available to Marketers, Ads Coming to Facebook Messenger

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yelp Agrees to License Its Data to Sprinklr, All the Better for Marketers to Understand Their Consumers (AdAge)… Facebook Plans to Put Ads in Messenger (TechCrunch)… Yahoo Warns of Industry-Wide ‘Pause’ in Mobile Growth for 2016 (VentureBeat)…

Street Fight Daily: Geofeedia to Expand After $17M Series B, How Patch Succeeds Post-AOL

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Geofeedia Raises $17M to Help Businesses Tap Into Social Location Data (TechCrunch)… Patch Rebounds After Split From AOL (Wall Street Journal)… Why Would Amazon Want To Be the New Barnes & Noble? (New Yorker)…

#SFSNYC: Investor Ted Leonsis and BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith on Media and the Local Economy

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The Street Fight Summit played host to a wide-ranging conversation between BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith and investor Ted Leonsis. The fireside chat touched on Leonsis’s decades of local economy expertise, stemming from his many investments in and experiences with media ventures, professional sports teams, and ecommerce ventures, including Groupon.

Patch’s St. John: People Crave an Understanding of What’s Happening Right Around Them

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“We have about just under 70 full-time salaried editors. Compared to the old Patch, which had a newsroom the size of the New York Times, that may sound small, but when I talk to other digital publishers and I tell them we’ve got 70 full-time salaried reporters in the field, that sounds like a lot to them. Our goal is to add more as we grow. As we get revenue, we put it immediately into expanding because we need to be national to really fully realize Patch’s potential,” said editor-in-chief Warren St. John.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s New Retail Features, Local Mobile Ad Spend to Reach $6.5 Billion by 2019

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Woos Retailers and Shoppers Alike with New Features (Gigaom)… Mobile Spend by Local Advertisers Forecast to Hit $6.5B by 2019 (MediaPost)… Security, Data Breaches Slow Down Mobile Payments Adoption (eMarketer)…

Street Fight Daily: Uber’s Big E-commerce Push, Amazon’s Restaurants Division Hires Staff

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Report: Uber to Begin E-commerce Deliveries Soon (The Next Web)… Amazon Hiring Staff for New Restaurant Division in Seattle, New York (Recode)… Once-Troubled Hyperlocal News Brand Patch Expands to Austin; Here’s the How and Why (Austin Business Journal)…

Street Fight Daily: Pinterest Opens Up, Best Buy Embraces Apple Pay

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Pinterest Woos Big Brands With Its New API (Recode)… Apple Pay Will Hit Best Buy Stores in 2015 (New York Times)… Kroger Acquires Dunnhumby Data Assets From Tesco, Forges New Venture (AdExchanger)…

Street Fight Daily: Patch Hits Profitability, GrubHub Enters Delivery Wars

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyHas Patch Finally Cracked The Code On Hyperlocal? (Digiday)… Grubhub Has Made Its Biggest Move Since the Seamless Merger (Street Fight)… CEO Says Yelp Is at ‘Peak Desktop’ — Is It Also Nearing Peak Growth? (Street Fight)…

Why Chilean Hyperlocal Network Mi Voz Succeeds Where Patch Failed

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Over the past decade, the Chilean community news network Mi Voz has transformed the way news is produced, consumed, and sustained in the often neglected small cities and towns outside of the country’s capital, Santiago. In the process, it has also proven that a local news network can be profitable…

Grading Street Fight’s 2014 Predictions

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At the end of each year, Street Fight invites staffers, friends, and luminaries from the industry to share their predictions for what’s in store for the coming year. Today, we take a look back at some of the predictions for 2014 to see who nailed it and who missed the boat…

Are Community News Sites and Investors Ready for Each Other?

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Venture-capital and angel investors have been avoiding digital community news — but there’s no mystery about why. There are some profitable one-offs, but most investors aren’t interested in one-offs. They want to put their money in the possibility of a good-sized payoff. That will only come with community news that is part of a network…