Street Fight Daily: Groupon’s Free-Fall Continues, Svpply to Local
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Free-Falling Groupon Has Its Problems but Bankrupacy Talk Is Bunk (All Things D)
The Chicago company is now valued at roughly $5 billion, or about a third of what it was worth on its first day as a public company. However, a complete financial meltdown is far from feasible at this point.
Svpply’s Store Explorer Lets You Window Shop From Your Phone (Fast Company)
Instead of simply providing a tiny red pin with an address, Store Explorer ports you over to a store’s Svpply page where you can swipe through some of their wares and see how many people have “Wanted” their items. Think of it as pre-window-shopping.
Location, Personalization Key Factors in Mobile Advertising Triumph (Mobile Marketer)
“As marketers, we understand that location is the most logical step of increasing usefulness of the ad for the consumer and effectiveness for the advertiser,” said Iryna Newman, head of mobile marketing at Groupon, San Francisco. “That’s why the next innovation in mobile advertising is to figure out how to do this dynamically, how to have the same ad that will target thousands of ZIP codes with offers and products relevant specifically to that area.”
Digital First Media CEO likes Times-Picayune’s New Digital-First Model (Poynter)
Advance Publications has an ally in John Paton, CEO of Digital First Media, who writes that despite some missteps, he supports the company’s decision to stop printing The Times-Picayune every day and focus on the website. Paton expresses surprise that the company has been “lambasted for not continuing with the old line of business that is driving them out of business.”
Making a Better Map: Four Months of OpenStreetMap with MapBox & Foursquare (Foursquare Blog)
Earlier this year, Foursquare embraced the OpenStreetMap movement, changing all the maps on foursquare.com to gorgeous maps powered by MapBox. Anonymized check-in data lets MapBox run global analysis comparing check-ins with OpenStreetMap locations, and more fine-grained analysis placing the number of check-ins on street level maps.
Android users: Buy that Starbucks with PayPal or in the U.K., Canada (GigaOm)
On Wednesday, the company updated its Starbucks mobile app for Android with new features, including PayPal support for card reloads, while also expanding support for the app in both Canada and the U.K. Starbucks now accepts mobile payments at 14,000 locations worldwide as a result.
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