Street Fight Daily: 12.19.11

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

Groupon, LivingSocial, and the Holy Grail of Commerce (E-Commerce Times)
Steve Harmon: The clear underlying theme here is that local commerce and local marketing are moving to new platforms and new companies — better ways to do business. The opportunity is big enough for these firms to say no to buyouts from Google (Groupon and Yelp) and forge ahead on their own. It may appear to be folly to refuse Google’s advances. But it depends on what these companies do, decisions they make now.

Barclay’s: Lower Ad Growth for ’12 (MediaPost)
Barclays also cited what it termed the “Wal-Mart Effect” on advertising, which it described as the shift of ad dollars from local to national media, as big marketers continue to seek greater efficiencies from their marketing budgets.

Merchants Get Savvy About Daily Deals, to the Detriment of Consumers, Groupon and LivingSocial (VentureBeat)
Rocky Agrawal: A recent deal by LivingSocial vividly illustrates one of the biggest challenges that many analysts have missed: merchants figure out how to make daily deals work for them. As a result, the economics come down to earth, making them less attractive for consumers and daily deal companies.

Kinek Lets Online Shoppers Pick Up at Local Stores (TechCrunch)
Kinek, which has partnered with a number of brick-and-mortar stores across the U.S. and Canada to serve as “KinekPoints” – secure locations where you can pick up your deliveries.

YP Daily Deals Annonces New Format to Make Finding Relevant Deals Easier (Daily Deal Media)
“Grid Format!” is a spreadsheet format that aggregates daily deals and coupons from as many as 800 providers. YP believes this new format will make it easier for users to find deals and avoid the daily deal overload that comes with too many email offers.

Online, Then Out for a Long Walk (New York Times)
For Dennis Crowley, 35, a founder of the social networking serviceFoursquare, Sundays are a time to explore the city the way his company encourages users to do, seeking out new experiences and revisiting old favorites.

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