Street Fight Daily: Highlight Takes Two, Digital First Announces Curation Team
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Highlight 1.2 Solves Some of the App’s Problems, but Big Questions Remain (The Verge)
Highlight, the iPhone app which attempted to make a big splash at this year’s SXSW conference, is back with a new version. The update adds in a few new features that make the service feel a bit more well-rounded — but they’re more likely to appease the few users Highlight currently has than draw new ones in.
Digital First Announces Curation Team (10,000 Words)
Digital First Media announced today that it is creating a national curation team as part of its centralized news operation.That operation, called Thunderdome, will track, collect and distribute curated news in order for newsrooms to focus on local reporting.
Twitter Offers Location Targeted Advertisements (CNET)
Twitter introduced targeted promoted tweets today, which means advertisers can send tailored messages based on where users live and what devices they’re on. “Until today, it’s been impractical to send highly tailored Tweets, since there was no way to reach people in New York without also reaching followers in Norway, Nebraska and Nigeria who can’t take advantage of your offer,” Kevin Weil, a Twitter product manager, wrote in a blog post.
Groupon Set to Diversify into a ‘Local Trading Place’ (The Next Web)
Veit Dengler, the head of Groupon’s operations outside of the US, revealed that there are plans to create an online local trading place to increase interaction with customers. Retailers offering vouchers would have the opportunity to create a calendar to entice users to return – a key problem in the Groupon business model so far.
How Hyperlocal Sites Handle ‘Micro-news’ in their Communities (Poynter)
Tracy Record: “Most importantly of all: We listen. When readers start to ask about a particular type of thing we hadn’t been covering … that’s a signal to us that it’s time to start covering. But that means you have to have a relationship with the community.”
Raved Is A Social-Powered Local Recommendations App Built On Facebook & Foursquare (TechCrunch)
The app works by aggregating your Facebook friends’ likes and check-ins, as well as friends’ check-ins from Foursquare, and then presents those to you in a very Pinterest-like interface. In the future, it will include busy news feeds of place activities pulled from those platforms as well as from Twitter, and will determine whether the local business is offering a deal or discount by aggregating from a network of local offers, deal sites, and Facebook Offers.
Get Street Fight Daily in your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletter.