Street Fight Daily: Groupon Pays Up, Yelp Shines in Apple Maps
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Groupon Promising Merchants “Lowest Cost” Payments Service (And It’s Using an iPhone) (All Things D)… You May Hate Apple Maps, But the Yelp Integration is Something to Love (Venture Beat)… How Better Location Data Could Mean More-targeted Mobile Ads (GigaOm)…
Street Fight Daily: Tribune Halves TribLocal, Yelp Pushes Into Asia
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… In Wake of Journatic, Tribune Reduces Number of TribLocal Editions (Crain’s Chicago Business)… Yelp Expands into Asia With Singapore Launch (CNet)… UBL Going After Huge Offline Co-op Ad Budgets (Screenwerk)…
More Hyperlocal Investment Content Coming to Street Fight
Over the last six months, our Hyperlocal Investment Report newsletter has aimed to guide investors through this new industry, to give context and insight into the market potential of pre-public companies, and to synthesize activity in the public markets as well as in private placement, venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, private equity and the like. With this issue, we’re moving it from a paid product to delivering this content on our public website for free, to engage in broader discussion around key issues in hyperlocal investing.
iPhone 5: What Passbook and Maps Could Mean for Hyperlocal
Apple is set to announce the iPhone 5 during a press event in San Francisco later today, and with it, a set of features that could deeply impact the hyperlocal ecosystem. Maps and Passbook have the potential to become core, high-growth platforms within the hyperlocal industry, and the deeper integration of Siri could move the needle in local search…
Street Fight Daily: DMN’s Marketing Venture, Google Offers Exec Exits
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Dallas Morning News Partners With Slingshot to Create Speakeasy Marketing Service (Dallas Morning News)… Google Offers Exec Eric Rosenblum Leaves for Mobile Ad Start-Up (All Things D)… Groupon Journeys Offshore for Customer Service (Wired)…
7 Strategies for Dealing With Online Reviews
While nobody doubts that positive reviews can be good for a business, many merchants aren’t quite sure how to encourage their customers to post their opinions online — and how to respond when they receive negative feedback in such a public forum. We spoke to five experts in the field and asked what businesses should consider when managing their online reviews…
While SMBs Focus on Social, Online Reviews May Have More Impact
If they have a choice between social media marketing and better customer service or a better product, small businesses may in fact be better off focusing on the product rather than the marketing push. You can have the best Twitter patter and the finest Facebook page — but a half-star rating change on Yelp because you failed to flip that burger in time or didn’t make eye contact with a customer might ultimately have a bigger effect on the bottom line…
Poll: 93% of Respondents Check Reviews Before Dining or Shopping
A majority of American consumers check online reviews before shopping or dining at a local business, according to a recent Street Fight poll. The three-question poll of 200 U.S. consumers points to a customer base heavily reliant on local reviews sites, particularly among the crucial 18-34 age demographic marketers everywhere covet.
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Surges, Google Monetizes Third-party Maps
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Yelp Surges as Growth Potential Counters Lockup Expiry (Businessweek)… Google Launches New Ad Formats To Help Developers Monetize Google Maps (TechCrunch)… Square Extends Its Retail Reach, Now Sells Its Card Reader at 1k AT&T Stores, 20k total (The Next Web)…
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Bulls Get Bearish, Google Wants More Wallet
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Yelp Traders Brace for Lockup Expiration; ‘Better to Be Safe Than Sorry’ (Wall Street Journal)… Google Wallet Aspires To Hold All Your Cards and Tickets (GigaOm)… How The Web ‘Check In’ Is Growing Up (Forbes)…
Echoer App Compiles and Curates Real-Time Feedback About Locations
Four months after its wide launch in iOS, the crowdsourcing, location-based service app Echoer has announced an expansion into Android and a new content partner program with more than 500 media, blogger and event partners. Street Fight caught up with Daniel Cowen, Echoer’s co-founder and CEO, to discuss the app’s progression, the difficulties associated with continually generating real-time content, and how it distinguishes itself from reviews sites like Yelp…
Facebook and the Latent Local Layer
If Facebook were to really turn its attention to local, it could do some amazing things. Imagine if all of our posts and check-ins related to local restaurants were correlated together in a meaningful way. There’s little doubt Facebook could recommend the new place down the street based on your preferences and those of others similar to you, with a high likelihood of successfully predicting what you will like…
Street Fight Daily: Retailers Get Into Mobile Payments, Holovaty Out at EveryBlock
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology... 
Target, Walmart and Co.: Why Leave Mobile Payments to Others? (GigaOm)… Did Yelp and TripAdvisor Push Google to Compete? (New York Times/Bits)… Founder Adrian Holovaty Leaving EveryBlock After 5 Years (Holovaty.com)…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon’s Dive, Big Brands Look Local
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology...
Ding Dong, Daily Deals Are Dead (Slate)… Media Companies Are Betting on Local, But Will Brands Follow? (Ad Age)… Yelp Makes Its Homepage More Social (ScreenWerk)…
Poll: Bad Experiences More Likely to Inspire Reviews
A poll of 1,000 U.S. respondents found that 19.1 percent of respondents are more likely to write a review after a poor experience, and 16.8 percent after a pleasant one. Another 42.5 percent said they’re equally likely to write a review regardless of the experience, and 21.6 percent said they’re not likely to write a review at all. The poll was conducted on behalf of Street Fight by third-party opinions site Toluna…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Misses Estimates, Google Buys Frommer’s
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology... Google-Frommer’s Deal Shows That Travel and Local Are Two Sides of Same Coin (GigaOm)… Groupon Sales Miss Estimates as Online Deal Demand Dims (Bloomberg Businessweek)… Is Google Eying a Same-Day Delivery Service? (Business Insider)…
Why Online Marketers Are Rethinking Their Yelp Strategy
Merchants have historically been wary of Yelp reviews — and for good reason. Yelpers have tended to be snarky and more focused on humor than accuracy. But there are changes coming at the end of 2012 that are likely to make many marketing pros reevaluate their relationship to the user-generated reviews site…
The Long Tail of Local Search
Far from invisible tools that merely get you to the store or service you want, local search products actually tell a story about the needs local search companies think they are trying to fulfill, demonstrating in some cases a stark contrast between the actual habits of the local consumer and the assumptions of local apps and websites…
Mobile Local Monetization Is Starting to Happen — For Real This Time
Facebook’s mobile Sponsored Story is already showing boosted performance over display ads. For many others, the mobile-first principle will come from location targeting, as its congruence with the use case similarly boosts performance and thus ad rates. For that and other reasons, I’ve forecast location-based ads to lead mobile ad revenues by 2016…
Apple Maps: Taking the Long View
There’s no dancing around the fact that the much-anticipated launch of Apple Maps has turned into a fiasco for the company. Yet there’s little doubt Apple will buff out this particular blemish with time. The interesting part will be seeing exactly how the company chooses to address the gap in expertise that led to the current sub-par product. A big acquisition of talent or technology seems likely…