Street Fight Daily: Groupon Restates, Bing Eliminates Local Targeting in Some Markets
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.
Groupon Restates Q4 Earnings (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Groupon Inc. restated its fourth-quarter earnings today and disclosed in its annual report that auditors issued a statement that the company had material weakness in its internal controls. The company said the revisions didn’t change its cash flow. It said the revision, which reduced fourth-quarter operating income by $30 million, was caused by the need for higher reserves for deals with higher prices that have higher refund rates than its typical daily deals.
LivingSocial Finds That Full-Price Offers Work Better on Mobile Than Discounts (AllThingsD)
Now the value of the company’s mobile offering is centralized around convenience instead of discounts. That’s something merchants generally like more. Instead of offering discounts to people who may have already been looking for a latte or a burger, now they are drawing in more people at full price.
Funding Circle, a Kickstarter for SMBs, Picks Up $16M From Index, Union Square Ventures (TechCrunch)
UK-based Funding Circle — a kind of Kickstarter for lending to smaller enterprises — has just announced that it has raised a $16 million round to further build up its business of enabling non-bank lending to small enterprises. The startup is a sign of the times not only in its crowdsourced, P2P roots, but also in the fact that it is aimed at bypassing banks.
Bing Eliminates Local-Ad Targeting in Places Where It Gets No Traffic (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: Microsoft announced that it was removing a list of cities from Bing/adCenter location targeting. The no-longer supported locations include many small cities in Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Montana, New Jersey, North Carolina, Nevada, upstate New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin.
10 Essential Android Apps For SMBs (Information Week)
If you run an SMB, you want the software that turns a phone or tablet into a business tool rather than a simple entertainment device. Android users no doubt already know the big names in work-related apps. But what about those unsung heroes, the less glamorous apps that simply help small and midsize businesses (SMBs) get things done on a daily basis? These are the worker bees — straightforward apps for necessary, if not always enjoyable, business tasks.
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