Fwix’s Shirazi: Layering Location on Top of the Web
San Francisco-based hyperlocal search database Fwix made news last week when it announced a new product called Geotagger that will allow publishers to tag Web pages with locations — in effect allowing them to create a layer of precise location information on top of their content, and giving them another method to index the information in that page by. The company is partnering with NBC to roll the service out onto the network’s local news Web sites. Street Fight visited Fwix’s offices in San Francisco last week and caught up with the company’s CEO, Darian Shirazi…
Skyhook’s Morgan: Leveraging the ‘Plumbing’ Behind Hyperlocal
With all of the focus on location-aware devices these days, the companies whose technology powers those locating systems have become even more important. Skyhook uses WiFi access points, cellular phone towers and GPS satellites to locate mobile devices with 10- to 20-meter accuracy. It then plots your position on a map that services like Foursquare and Facebook Places can translate to a place with a name, like the bar you’re in or near.
Street Fight Daily: 06.13.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… Groupon’s Andrew Mason has been visiting Beijing, and is now responding to a few very obvious problems at Groupon China that seasoned observers have been noting since the group buy Web site first opened up shop in Beijing and Shanghai. (TechCrunch)… One current Patch editor, who says she was “hired as part of the 2010 end of year push to launch 750 sites,” sent a note she titled “5 Things to hate about working for Patch” — one of which is “The Patch model isn’t sustainable. (Business Insider)…
Twitter Local: @Tolles, @JimBradySP, @Vacanti, and more
All the tweets that fit… listening in on the hyperlocal Twitterverse.
This week, Groupon’s CEO poked fun at the “quiet period” the company is in now that it has filed for an initial public offering; SCVNGR’s Seth Priebatsch hates First Data – just fyi. Jim Brady of Journal Register thinks the Newspaper Association of America is getting “absurd” in its analyses. And more.
The F.C.C. Solution for Community News is So Last Century
The new and much-quoted F.C.C. report on “Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a BroadBand Age” is massive and well written, and its authors did their due diligence by holding workshops whose testimony from an array of media experts fills 711 pages. But the report’s back-to-the-future prescription for community news in the digital era is a big disappointment.
The report’s most fraught conclusion, and the one getting the most published attention:
“…in many communities, we now face a shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting. This is likely to lead to the kinds of problems that are, not surprisingly, associated with a lack of accountability—more government waste, more local corruption, less effective schools, and other serious community problems. The independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned for journalism—going so far as to call it crucial to a healthy democracy—is in some cases at risk at the local level.”
..
Street Fight Daily: 06.10.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… The FCC has produced a 478-page report on the state of the media in the digital age, and — no surprise — the report has found a big gap in watchdog and investigative journalism, and the local news hole hasn’t been filled by the proliferation of online news and non-profits. At the same time, the report doesn’t support any major government intiative to correct the situation. (Paid Content, Block-By Block, Nieman Lab, Romenesko/Patch)… Increasingly, location is getting baked into regular web pages as well. Fwix is taking its hyperlocal places database and exposing it to web sites in a novel way. “Our goal is to index the Web by location,” says Fwix CEO Darian Shirazi. (TechCrunch)…
Why Hyperlocals Are Missing Out on Engagement
“Engagement,” just about everyone agrees, is a must, especially for news websites, most especially hyperlocals. But engagement metrics for news – even allowing for sometimes wildly conflicting numbers produced from different methodologies – are mostly grim. The average Facebook user spends a half hour-plus on that paragon of digital engagement. News sites get minutes that can be counted on one hand. Taking into account murky Web analytics, only a fraction of that time – about three minutes for most hyperlocal news sites, according to Alexa – represents engagement where the site has captured the user’s undivided attention…
Realtor Reaches Clients Through SEO Marketing, Hyperlocal Blogs
Realtor Karen Benvin Ransom’s listings have moved far beyond the newspaper classifieds. With a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a personal Web site, and a series of articles she’s written about her local community online, Ransom has honed in on the exact sites and search terms that her clients at Houlihan Lawrence are using to shop for homes in Westchester County, N.Y.
Street Fight Daily: 06.09.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… One Patch salesperson – candidly self-described as a “disgruntled employee” — said that”people in the sales teams that are successful have to sell the product to an ignorant lot of small business owners that can’t differentiate between branding and performance-driving results. When it gets down to paying the editors, paying the sales staff, paying the management and the requisite expenses that go along with that, the numbers just do not compute.” (Business Insider)… A new forecast from eMarketer puts online ad spending at $31.3 billion this year, up 20 percent. That is double the 10.5 percent growth rate it put out last December for 2011. The new forecast shows online ad spending reaching nearly $50 billion in 2015. (TechCrunch)…
Eversave’s Doyle: Creating Deals That Aren’t ‘One-and-Done’
Eversave, the third-largest online daily deals company in the U.S. (behind Groupon and LivingSocial), can trace its online deals business back over a decade, when its parent, Prospectiv, launched a service offering printable online coupons. The company’s daily deals service, which launched last year, runs offers in 17 different cities around the country, mixing local-specific deals with discounts on larger national brands aimed specifically at women…
Location Obsessives Beware: You May Never Leave Your Screens
For years I’ve been fascinated with digitized maps and the spell they can cast. To see where we’re going, where we’ve been, where we could have gone — to become found when lost and undiscoverable when seeking silence – digital maps lead us to all these things, and away from some. The perfect companion. And since the map interface has jumped from atoms to bits, lighting up pixels of core applications on nearly every device stamped out by innovators of sleek glass and steel to copycats of affordable utility (just about all phones now carry mapping apps), almost everyone can play along…
Street Fight Daily: 06.08.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… Foursquare has teamed with 7-11 to offer a trip to suborbital space as a prize in an online contest. While the US spaceflight program is getting its budget shut down, there’s something rather poetic about this opportunity. (ReadWriteWeb)…
A study of U.K. salon owners found that only 1% of Groupon buyers go on to become regular customers. Moreover, Groupon’s churn rate could be as high as 90%. (Dylan Collins)…
Police Scanners and Speculation = Necessary Hyperlocal Journalism?
A lively discussion erupted yesterday in the comments section of Street Fight’s interview with B-Town Blog’s Scott Schaefer. At issue: Schaefer’s suggestion that sites did their communities disservice by reporting on rumors and information that comes over the transom via unconfirmed rumors and police scanner reports… Among those taking issue were The Batavian’s Howard Owens, who wrote: “When you don’t do scanner reports, you’re missing a key to audience growth and retention, and I think abandoning your ethical obligation as a real-time news service to keep readers fully informed.”…
Case Study: The Difficulty of Turning Coupon Buyers Into Customers
Brooke Randazzo Eggert, the owner of r3mg, a creative boutique that specializes in photography and invitation design in Oak Park, Ill., has experienced the highs and lows of hyperlocal marketing. She tells Street Fight that she’s had more success gaining loyal, local customers by advertising on community news sites and blogs than by running group coupons on sites like Mamapedia and Gleeday…
Street Fight Daily: 06.07.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… Groupon is joining two marketing-services and analytics firms to get deeper into the traditional grocery coupon business with a test today. In a first for Groupon, today’s deal in Massachusetts uses supermarket loyalty cards to conduct the transaction. (AdAge)…
“Augmented reality” apps put a layer of locally relevant data on top of the scene around you. But who owns the rights to ad space within augmented reality platforms? Currently there’s nothing keeping multiple brands from owning the same space. (Mashable)…
Foursquare, Groupon, and the Market-Making Problem
With Groupon’s filing to go public last week, there has been even more debate over the two-sided market strategy of consumers and local merchants. Another business that has focused on this approach is Foursquare. Is the window of opportunity closing for Foursquare to become the breakout success it could be? The answer depends on how much the company is willing to change its DNA to serve both sides of their market — and perhaps take a few lessons on self-serve and average selling price from Groupon…
Patch’s Main Problem? Paltry Pay