Street Fight Daily: 08.23.11

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

Facebook is killing off Places. To be clear, Facebook is not ducking out of the location game itself. In fact, you could say that they’re doubling-down on it. But they are moving away from the game that the “check-in” services have been playing. (TechCrunch)

Group Commerce, which sells a software platform to let publishers host their own daily deal applications, has acquired geo-location startup Socialight. The Socialight team and technology will be put toward fleshing out Group Commerce’s mobile strategy. (GigaOm)

BuyWithMe has recruited Charlie Gray, formerly Executive Vice President at Patch, as its new “Chief People Officer.” The company says Gray will help manage the company’s growth plans, and hire, train and retain talent throughout the country. (TechCrunch)

“Gaopeng, Groupon’s China venture, is a disaster,” writes Bill Bishop from DigiCha. “The best outcome may be some kind of face-saving deal with Tencent to prevent it from becoming a world-class embarrassment.” (Business Insider)

Ryan Sutton, food critic for Bloomberg News, can now add crusader to his resume.  Two months ago, he launched a Tumblr called The Bad Deal devoted to “highlighting BAD DEALS on Groupon, Gilt, Living Social, Savored and elsewhere.” (BetaBeat)

“Direct, digital and interactive have resumed their relatively stronger growth rate, when compared to traditional media,” according to the world’s largest ad agency, WPP. (Paid Content)

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