Street Fight Daily: 08.05.11

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

“Location is no longer a service like maps or navigation, but increasingly an enabler of new product experiences,” writes Forrester’s Thomas Husson. “In a nutshell, the very notion of location-based services doesn’t not mean much anymore.” (Moco News)

Mayorships, stickers, badges — these are the rewards new mobile apps confer on us for supplying them with the data of our daily activities. But there’s one potential stumbling block which could stop this gamification going global: the rest of the world might not be as competition-crazy as Americans are. (PaidContent)

Locationary, an online and mobile service that lets you search “place” data, such as local businesses, has raised $2.5 million to hire new staff and launch a powerful new local data management system. (VentureBeat)

LivingSocial is close to continuing its international expansion with the impending acquisition of Grupfoni, a leading local ecommerce company in Turkey. The deal values Grupfoni at more than $50 million. (TechCrunch)

Users of the social influence ranking service Klout can now see how their local check-ins impact their overall social reach, thanks to an integration with Foursquare. (ReadWriteWeb)

A method of predicting which individuals may become friends on social networking sites based on the places they visit out in the real world has been developed by researchers. The new approach to “friend suggestions” looks at the usual haunts of individuals to determine which users may have connections with one another. (Reuters)

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