Local Merchant Reviews: Problem and Opportunity

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The more I dig into the local listings and ratings business, the more evidence I see that that the information they provide is so easily rigged or faked, there’s no way I can trust them. It spotlights a hazard that review sites are failing to address—and an opportunity they’re missing.

Borrell: 20% of Local Marketing Budgets Planned for Mobile

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Borrell Associates, which specializes in research covering local and online advertising, ha issued a report this week called “Main Street Goes Mobile” that examines the role that mobile media is projected to play in local business marketing over the next five years. Pointing to a business and consumer environment ready to embrace mobile advertising, Borrell cites statistics indicating that a full third of website readership already accesses information via mobile devices…

Bloomspot Leads an Industry Shift

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Who: Bloomspot

What: $40 million in funding and a merchant guarantee

With all the chatter about Groupon’s updated IPO filings this week, and news that Patch is offering up daily deals in 800 (not a typo) hyperlocal markets, a couple of announcements from Bloomspot didn’t get as much attention as they otherwise might. The company said that it had scored a whopping $40 million in new funding, and revealed that it is using the data it collects to guarantee that deals they do will be profitable to vendors, or Bloomspot will cover the difference from its cut. There are a couple of important takeaways from all this news…

Street Fight Daily: 08.12.11

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

An upcoming promotion with RedBox deal seems to go against Foursquare’s whole raison d’être — which is all about getting users out and about. But the new users that result will become increasingly valuable, particularly as Foursquare focuses not just on letting users share where they are now, but to suggest where they should be going. (GigaOm)…

Should investors run screaming from Groupon? Is it an overrated, hyped-up scam? Are we in the middle of another tech bubble? Well, Groupon does seem rather prone to hyperbole, perhaps because its business has proved so worthy of it in its mere months of existence. (Slate)…

How SeeClickFix Built Revenue Streams From Potholes

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SeeClickFix started humbly — from potholes in New Haven, Conn. But it grew quickly as it mobilized citizens in thousands of communities around the U.S. to flag irritating and sometimes serious problems in their neighborhoods. But for all its social purpose, SeeClickFix is a for-profit company. Co-founder Ben Berkowitz talks about how SeeClickFix developed revenue from multiple sources…

Case Study: Creativity Counts When Putting Together Foursquare Specials

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Tracy McMahon, the proprietor of  CoCo’s Sunset Grille on Tybee Island, Ga., has come up with some interesting Foursquare deals to attract new customers and engage existing fans…

Street Fight Daily: 08.11.11

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

Groupon is spending considerable money to acquire subscribers, but those subscribers are buying less Groupons. Groupon is also spending considerable money to acquire merchants but are making less revenue per merchant. That’s not good. (Yipit Blog)…

According to a new survey, it’s not location-relevant advertising that is most valued by mobile consumers; it’s mobile ads that are personalized to a users’ tastes. (Paid Content)…

Patch Pitch: 855-Town Gorilla Doles Out Daily Deals

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Patch certainly reports the news, but it also seems that often Patch is the news. This is one of those weeks. And not simply because one of their interns recently saved a pedestrian, and covered it. The hyperlocal news destination that AOL’s betting a bunch on (closing in on $200 million invested thus far) announced last week that it had crossed a milestone of one million articles published. It’s also rolling out a shiny new daily deals product in over 800 of its communities…

Is the Local Deals Industry Heading for Segmentation?

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Some companies are betting on a major specialization of the deals market. Signpost CEO Stuart Wall believes that the “stack” — a term used to describe the spectrum of companies in a single industry — is dividing into three major segments: distribution, exchanges, and merchant specialists…

Street Fight Daily: 08.10.11

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

SinglePlatform has raised another $3.25 million to launch new products. “If you want to monetize local, you will need to go through SinglePlatform one day, because they’ll own the best, trusted relationship with the merchant,” a confident venture capitalist says. (Business Insider)…

One year after the launch of TBD, the local news project barely exists. Journal Register’s Steve Buttry quietly lifts a glass to his TBD colleagues and shares some lessons for other digital pioneers from his TBD experience. (SteveButtry.com)…

LivingSocial Data Shows Which Deals Are Hottest

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When the clock is ticking, deal hounds prefer yoga to pizza, Botox to the zoo, and massages to pretty much everything. In a study released by LivingSocial yesterday, the daily deals company gave a snapshot of its U.S. sales data collected during the second quarter of 2011. “We really wanted to share with everyone the trends which we are seeing,” says LivingSocial Communications Director Maire Griffin about the report…

Case Study: Daily Deal Pitches Overwhelm SF Restaurateur

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If daily deals haven’t already reached a tipping point, then San Francisco restaurateur Joe Hargrave believes that day is coming soon. The Tacolicious owner gets between four and nine pitches from daily deal salespeople each month. He struggles to understand why businesses would want to target potential customers who are only after a good deal…

Street Fight Daily: 08.09.11

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

Bloomspot has secured $40 million in new funding. The company focuses on offers from high-quality merchants looking to connect with their best customers and deepen loyalty. The offers they serve are highly tailored for specific interests and demographics. (TechCrunch)…

In its quarterly earnings report, AOL said that Patch has added 44 towns to end Q2 in 846 towns and is on track to have about a 1,000 coverage areas by year’s end. (PaidContent)…

Hyperlocals: ‘Use Facebook Like the Rest of the Planet’

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Facebook, with its semi-walled set-up, is where it’s at for indie hyperlocal publishers like the Valley Independent Sentinel.
We’re in a market with two of the three largest newspapers in Connecticut. The two dailies are in no way ignoring the Web. It’s their top priority, from what they keep saying. Yet we have more followers on Facebook then one of the big fellas — and we’re not too far off from the other heavy hitter.

So here are a few Facebook tips that can help independent publishers rack up the “likes”:

LocalVox Launches White-Label Local Marketing Tool

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LocalVox, the local marketing platform built by hyperlocal publisher Nearsay, has launched a white-label advertorial publishing tool. The widget will allow larger hyperlocals and vertical niche publishers with existing sales and marketing teams to host and syndicate advertorial content from their clients across the LocalVox publishing network — and will help them push that content to social media outlets…

Street Fight Daily: 08.08.11

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

Groupon’s subscribers have more than doubled to 115 million so far this year, according to a person familiar with the situation. Groupon had 50.58 million subscribers at the end of 2010. That jumped 64 percent to 83.1 million at the end of the first quarter. Since then, the number of subscribers has climbed to 115 million, the person said. (Reuters)…

While it may be curious that advertisers, investors, and Foursquare’s ever-growing horde of users continue to maintain faith in the company’s fortunes, this allegiance has almost entirely to do with the enchantments of a single person: founder Dennis Crowley. (Ad Age)…

Relying on Facebook When Google+ is Rising Looks Risky

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Over the past year, an awful lot of small businesses and hyperlocal media players have bet the farm on Facebook, ditching traditional standalone websites and go all-in on a Facebook presence. I wonder whether they are reconsidering that decision now that Google+ is on the rise.

Foursquare Dominates the Week

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The best or biggest deal, assertion, investment or other strategy this week. Who: Foursquare What: A revenue plan, a growth strategy and a (small) design upgrade A slew of developments came out of location-based social network Foursquare this week, just days after the company announced it would partner with Groupon to share the daily deal […]

Street Fight Daily: 08.05.11

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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)…

Navigating the ‘New Ethics of Local Journalism’: Dangerous Curves Ahead

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Journalistic ethics is ordinarily a head-nodding, Sunday-sermon kind of subject. Unless a community website names a teenager who died of a drug overdose in what was a string of Oxycontin fatalities among local youths…or publishes a “news” story about a business that’s a regular advertiser or is being avidly sought….or takes sides on a divisive […]