Gannett Casts About in Local, Expands ‘Deal Chicken’

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Why did the chicken cross the road? Apparently, deals were on the other side. Gannett is an enormous company with over 50,000 employees managing scores of properties that include hundreds of national and local Web sites, print publications, marketing consultancies, a careers site, not to mention a little thing called USA Today. It’s the typical corporate megalith trying to hold onto customers from the old world as they lurch headlong toward the future, simultaneously ramping up some divisions while laying off hundreds elsewhere…

Street Fight Daily: 06.22.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...

Daily deal aggregator Yipit just raised $6 million in a series B led by Highland Capital Partners. The company tracks 335 active deal services in 32 cities in North America. (TechCrunch)…

Foursquare has released version 3.2 of its iPhone app. Users will be pleased to find that Foursquare has streamlined the check-in process and improved its “Explore tab,” enabling users to navigate between nearby locations that are recommended as well as trending. (Mashable)…

Surveys All Say: Hyperlocal’s Taking Over Ad Spending. Duh.

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A new survey released this week by the hyperlocal network Topix says what is increasingly clear in every new data that emerges: ad dollars are shifting to local, and of that, most are going online. The Topix survey of ad agencies found 90% said they are buying more local ads (“geographically-targeted”) than they ever have.

Case Study: How a Nashville Salon Retains Daily Deal Customers

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Julie Marler is the owner of J. Bangs Salon, a hairstyling studio in Nashville that has had great success running deals with Groupon and LivingSocial. Marler estimates that she’s retained 50% of her daily deal customers by preparing her staff ahead of time and increasing stylists in the weeks following each deal…

HopStop Revamps, Adds Features and New Cities

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HopStop, which was created in 2005 as a point-to-point transit routing website, has given itself a few facelifts over the years as it tries to stay unique and relevant in its increasingly crowded niche. The company announced another one yesterday, partnering up with big names like Yelp!, Hertz, Limos.com and Zvents, to become a “general lifestyle app.”

Street Fight Daily: 06.21.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...

Just-over-two-year-old Foursquare has just announced an important milestone: 10 million user accounts. The company will pass 750 million check-ins later this week, with users are now averaging about 3 million check-ins a day. (TechCrunch)…

EveryBlock, the website that collects community news and connects neighbors with each other, has hired a new president, Brian Addison, to oversee its growth and marketing efforts. Founder Adrian Holovaty remains with EveryBlock, focusing more on product than business. (Chicago Tribune)…

Google Offers: Not a ‘Groupon Killer’ (But Still Pretty Killer)

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It’s been widely reported over the past few weeks that Google has launched a deals platform known as Offers. But most of this coverage has missed the point — falling into the tired but pervasive trope of “[insertnamehere] Killer” claims (in this case, Groupon). Offers will be similar to Groupon in some ways, but its economics and mobile integration are quite different. Comparisons aside, the real story is how Offers plugs into Google’s massive distribution network of search, Gmail, mobile and about 26 other products.

Localeze’s Dague: Solving the Problem of Search for Local Merchants

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As online search has become such a pervasive utility in our lives, maintenance of accurate local search results has become increasingly important for brick-and-mortar businesses everywhere — as well as for the ever-growing number of location-based platforms that serve up those search results as part of their geo-located service. Localeze does a lot of the behind-the-scenes work in making sure that listings across hundreds of platforms remain accurate and current. The company monitors and manages local business identities, and authenticates local search results, making sure that business information is accurate and consistent…

Street Fight Daily: 06.20.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startupsWhile LivingSocial may indeed have future plans for an IPO, the recent rumor was obviously kicked out there in an attempt to create some buzz. (Daily Deal Media)… Last week came a report of a scathing review from a Scvngr client, Vintank. The small agency felt that the mobile checkin company did a terrible job with its campaign and broke a lot of promises. Scvngr’s founder and CEO, Seth Priebatsch responded Friday with his version of the story. According to Priebatsch, some of the blame was Scvngr’s, but much of it falls on Vintank. (Business Insider)…

Post-IPO, Will Pandora Go Hyperlocal?

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Over a year ago I got a chance to sit down with Pandora founder Tim Westergren for a long interview about the company. In our conversation about business models and Pandora, the most compelling feature he discussed was a hyperlocal, blue-sky idea that sounded incredibly cool. It left me thinking back then that Pandora could become a hyperlocal powerhouse when that ad market developed…

Edmunds’ Drive for a Daily Deal

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The single-best deal, assertion, investment or other strategy this week…

Who: Edmunds…

Why: For its bid to play in daily deals for cars

“It helps automakers and dealers who have excess inventory or oversupply of specific models, or have a need to get rid of the past model-year vehicles through additional discounts. So it is intended to be very targeted to areas that need that focused conversation around certain vehicles.”Michelle Denogean, VP of business operations at Edmunds.com

Street Fight Daily: 06.17.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… eBay is beefing up its mobile arsenal with its first local shopping app, powered by the local shopping search engine that eBay acquired in June, Milo. (Mashable)…

AOL chief Tim Armstrong said yesterday that “certain” Patch outlets — there are 800 and counting — should be profitable by Q3 or Q4, though he didn’t offer specifics. (Paid Content)…

Patch Partners With Geomentum to Attract Big Brands

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It’s widely known that AOL’s Patch network has been hemorrhaging money at a rapid clip — and that ad sales across its network of over 800 hyperlocal sites aren’t yet where they would need to be to ultimately make the company viable. But a new partnership with the country’s largest hyperlocal ad agency, Geomentum, could potentially turn into a major boost.

Social Purpose Hyperlocals: Go for Gumption

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Grand Rapids, Mich., was decreed to be “dying” in January. The report, by Mainstreet.com, turned out to be greatly exaggerated. But exactly how healthy is the “Office Furniture Capital of the World,” the second largest city in a state that has been reeling economically since before the great recession? To find out, I went to The Rapidian, which bills itself as “a hyperlocal news source powered by the people of Grand Rapids.”

Case Study: Restaurant’s Major Discounts for Foursquare ‘Mayor’

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When Amelia Sawyer and her husband Jonathon jumped on the Foursquare bandwagon, they had no idea what an impact location-based services would have on their bottom line. Years later, customers are “fighting to the death” to become mayor of the Greenhouse Tavern – both for the bragging rights and to take advantage of the 40% discount – making it one of the most sought-after mayorships in Cleveland…

Street Fight Daily: 06.16.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...

In explaining the relevance of its new product, Geotagger, Fwix says that “LatLong” — latitude and longitude — is going to replace keywords as the standard for online ad buys, as daily deals and mobile usage become a greater part of publishers’ traffic and revenue streams. (PaidContent)…

While Groupon may want to move its IPO forward quickly, to capitalize on the enthusiasm generated by a new wave of Internet-related stock debuts, it will likely have to wait until late summer, or possibly the fall, for its stock to be priced and trading publicly. (Marketwatch)…

TribLocal Quietly Blooms to 88 Hyperlocal Sites — And Growing

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Tribune Company has long demonstrated its interest in reaching people on a local level — whether it’s through the company’s many local TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, their classifieds products or even their digital subsidiaries. The company was far ahead of other media in the early ’90s when they pushed content out over AOL and then the Web. And over the years they’ve also partnered with a number of local online efforts like Digital City. While that experience might be useful to carry over from Local 1.0, the fact is nobody from that period is present today at TribLocal, a relatively new (2007) effort that has online and sites and weekly print companions sprouting up in Chicago neighborhoods like colorful, polished digital plumes…

Hyperlocal Case Study: Efficiency, Aggregation, and Profit

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There’s one thing every publisher of a local news site knows: making enough ad dollars to get paid is hard. In fact it’s really hard. But it’s been my experience that if we look at why the Web is so dang good, we can make the struggle to keep the lights on a stiff hike rather than a mountain climb. At TheDigitel, which I founded in 2008 to offer a central place for hyperlocal coverage in Charleston, S.C., we’ve managed to carve out a niche among a saturated market (we have several conventional media outlets and a vibrant local blog and Twitter community) by taking an evolving approach to creating content and winning advertisers…

Street Fight Daily: 06.15.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.

According to a Rice University study, most businesses don’t feel any loyalty toward a particular daily deal site, and over the next few years daily deal sites will likely “have to settle for lower shares of revenues from businesses compared to their current levels, and it will be harder and more expensive for them to find viable candidates to fill their pipelines of daily deals.” (PaidContent)…

Groupon Inc. Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis’ venture firm is an investor in rival LivingSocial and has ties to its board, a relationship that could pose a conflict, according to corporate-governance experts. (Bloomberg)…

Using Mobile Inventory Data to Drive Foot Traffic

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It’s no secret that local brick and mortar retailers have been heavily competing with online shopping for years now. So, how do these stores stay competitive in an environment where Amazon offers free shipping, no taxes, and consumers can shop from the comfort of their own home? In other words: how do retailers localize their presence, stand out from the crowd and bring shoppers right to their front door?…