B-Town Blog’s Schaefer: Hyperlocal Means Being ‘On the Ground’
Scott Schaefer is the founder, publisher and editor of B-Town Blog, in Burien, Wash., which was named the best hyperlocal news Web site by the Society of Professional Journalists Pacific Northwest Chapter. B-Town Blog, one of six hyperlocal content sites operated by Schaefer’s LOL Dudez, aims to “report news from a ‘location-based’ perspective.” Schaefer recently spoke to Street Fight about how that “location-based” principle guides everything the site does.
Street Fight Daily: 06.06.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… 
If Groupon slams the brakes on marketing costs, the value of hyperlocal online inventory will fall after a recent surge in demand, writes Jeff Bercovici. On the other hand, if Groupon is wrong and it has to keep spending to attract customers the way it is now, then it will likely never be profitable and those ad dollars will go away anyway. (Forbes)… Since Groupon filed its S-1 on Thursday, there have been hundreds of negative articles written about Groupon. While some of the concerns brought up about Groupon are legitimate, many of them are unfounded, writes Vinicius Vacanti. (Yipit Blog)…
Main Street’s Need for Speed
The single-best deal, assertion, investment or other strategy this week.
Who: Main Street Connect
Why: For its plan to scale up to 6,000 hyperlocal sites across the country in a few short years
Advertisers typically want to reach more than a single town. If independent community news site proprietors are making good dough, why aren’t they propagating, sharing their news prowess with neighbor towns? That’s what we’ll be doing with our profits — reinvest, reinvest, reinvest, so our products and processes get more and more excellent.. — Carll Tucker, Main Street Connect CEO…
Street Fight Daily: 06.03.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
In its long awaited S-1, it’s clear that Groupon has impressive topline growth. However, when looking at it’s oldest markets, it appears that their business model is deteriorating. (Yipit Blog)…
Several more perspectives on the Groupon IPO: a Twitter debate over the company’s doomed-ness, a look at who owns what stake in the company, a warning to investors by Andrew Mason, and some red flags for potential investors. (GigaOm, TechCrunch, PaidContent, Business Insider)…
Groupon to Go Public — And Then Where?
The point of the company that eventually became Groupon was initially to inspire group action around a political or social cause. It was called ThePoint.
The point of Groupon… well, that may yet to be determined. The company, which filed an S-1 today with the Securities & Exchange Commission for a $750 million initial public offering, is known as a group-buying firm offering deep discounts on everything from hair removal to horse rides, complete with clever copy in each offer. It has seen a meteoric rise in revenue, earning $644 million in the first quarter of 2011 alone, up from $713.3 million in all of 2010. It has 83 million subscribers across 43 countries. And, as CEO Andrew Mason revealed this week at AllThingsD’s D9 conference, about half of its 8,000 workforce is in sales. Groupon has some serious feet on the streets…
Case Study: Minneapolis Music Club Becomes a Foursquare Hot Spot
Minneapolis isn’t a city that’s lacking for nightlife options, but First Avenue marketing coordinator Machen Davis believes her music club has been able to stand out from the pack by using location-based services as promotional tools and by turning the club’s Foursquare mayorships into a fierce competition…
Roost’s DIY Social Media for Small Businesses
As more and more companies vie for marketing dollars from small business owners, many businesses find the growing options confusing. They barely have time to keep up with the demands of online marketing on sites like Facebook and Twitter — and it’s unclear whether it’s best for them to place an ad on a hyperlocal site or offer a daily deal where they lose 75% of the sale…
PBS ‘Local’ — Building From the Bottom Up
Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood might bear resemblance to an idyllic (or frightening) vision of the hyperlocal ideal — but the network behind these standards of our pop-culture recollections has its own ideas about what it means to be out there on the street. PBS wants to bring culture to the neighborhood; to share among others. To be local while not being hyper. To cooperate.
Street Fight Daily: 06.01.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… What’s next in the evolution of geolocation? Foursquare’s most attractive qualities — the social game of checking in and the availability of local deals — arguably provide a foundation. But will we need more value if checkins are ever to hit the mainstream? (Mashable)… Google is beginning the roll-out of its Daily Deals service, Google Offers, today. The news that Google is getting into the daily deals space is not a surprise. Google attempted and failed to acquire Groupon for $6 billion last year. Google claims that Offers will take the heavy lifting of marketing off of the business owner, allowing the business to simply focus on the customer. (Mashable, The Next Web)…
How Not to Be Yelp: Foodspotting