Street Fight Daily: Mobile Companies Ally, Should Yahoo Buy Foursquare?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Nokia, Samsung, Sony Mobile and Others Form In-Location Alliance, Seek to Boost Indoor Positioning Technologies (TheNextWeb)… Will Foursquare Be Marissa Mayer’s First Big Acquisition At Yahoo? (Marketing Land)… Groupon’s New Operations Czar Grasps Shaky Helm (Chicago Tribune)…
As Social Media Hype Wanes, Appeal of Hyperlocal Remains
While social media is here to stay, the market shares a lot more with the online advertising segment than, say, the SaaS subscription business. Social media is only as sticky as its user base and only as attractive as it is fresh. I am sure that there are real benefits to tapping a social graph for sales. But I am becoming more sure that those benefits are incremental and evolutionary, rather than a step change…
Transaction Overview: CityGrid Acquires Felix
Yext launched Felix in 2009 as a pay-per-call local advertising service. What makes Felix unique is its patent-pending engine that uses speech recognition technology to listen to all the calls received by a local business. It then transcribes and analyzes the calls, separating those received from consumers from those received from wrong numbers, telemarketers and job seekers…
Street Fight Daily: PayPal Partners with Discover, Gannett Gets Social
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… PayPal Trumps Square’s Deal With Starbucks by Partnering With Discover (All Things D)… Gannett Has Bought Social Media Ad Company BLiNQ (TechCrunch)… Groupon’s Risk of Traveling Salesmen (Wall Street Journal)…
Facebook and the Latent Local Layer
If Facebook were to really turn its attention to local, it could do some amazing things. Imagine if all of our posts and check-ins related to local restaurants were correlated together in a meaningful way. There’s little doubt Facebook could recommend the new place down the street based on your preferences and those of others similar to you, with a high likelihood of successfully predicting what you will like…
With Felix Buy, CityGrid Focuses on Closed-Loop Transactions
“As a standalone brand under CityGrid, Felix will be able to expand its advertiser base and develop new products that help local businesses find new customers across the web and mobile devices,” said Jason Finger, CityGrid’s CEO. “Now that Felix is part of IAC, it also has the ability to more effectively syndicate its current customers across the CityGrid network.”
How Can Hyperlocal Companies Crack the Local Sales Code?
Plum District, the daily deals site for moms, is just the latest to find that building a national sales force to woo small business marketing dollars is no easy task. In fact, the difficulty remains a barrier to profitability for all kinds of SMB-focused businesses — from Angie’s List to Groupon to Patch…
Where to Look if You’re a Job-Seeking Professional in Local
Based on our conversations with presidents and CEOs and other data we track in the marketplace, we have seen a strong demand in two key areas: sales and technology. Companies continue to build up both inside, outside and national sales forces across the country. On the technology front, if you have experience with a consumer driven web company, you know how robust the job market currently is for people with your skill set. Learn more about who’s hiring and who’s not…
Street Fight Daily: Trulia Files for IPO, Groupon Investors Exit
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Trulia Files to Go Public (New York Times)… Groupon Investors Give Up (Wall Street Journal)… Layoffs At Plum District Point To Changes In Hyperlocal Deals Market (TechCrunch)…
All Geotargeting Methods Are Not Created Equal
The social-mobile-local movement will most certainly drive even stronger interest in and use of geotargeting. But with all the options available, what factors dictate when marketers should use one method over another? It depends on what message they want to convey to whom and when, along with how much contact and engagement they want with the consumer…
Street Fight Daily: Square Offers Flat Rate, Food Network Goes Local
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology...
Square Offers Flat-Rate Plan for Small Businesses (New York Times)…
Food Network Goes Local, Builds Its Own Meal Finder App (GigaOm)…
Instagram 3.0 Bets Big On Geolocation With Photo Maps (TechCrunch)…
Will ‘Breaking Promos’ Help Hyperlocals Bring New Customers to SMBs?
SMBs have been flocking to social sites like Facebook, where they can set up neat pages about their products and service. That’s fine, says Scott Karp, but “the only customers they reach are existing ones.” To solve this, his service Breaking Promos lets SMBs create pages on a social site that runs within the pages of hyperlocal news sites….
Case Study: Salon Keeps Customers Coming Back With Wacky Rewards
As a co-owner at Red 7 Salon, Jason Hall likes to think of his business as the “Cheers of the salon world.” Rather than encouraging loyalty with cash-back incentives, Hall has partnered with Belly to give away “fun” rewards — like the chance to shave one of the salon owners’ heads — that don’t cost his business a dime…
Street Fight Daily: Retailers Get Into Mobile Payments, Holovaty Out at EveryBlock
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology... 
Target, Walmart and Co.: Why Leave Mobile Payments to Others? (GigaOm)… Did Yelp and TripAdvisor Push Google to Compete? (New York Times/Bits)… Founder Adrian Holovaty Leaving EveryBlock After 5 Years (Holovaty.com)…
Deep Data and the Semantics of Local
In the case of local search, there is no prevailing reason beyond lack of attention to prevent the industry from doing a better job of serving the full range of consumer needs. For the time being, industry attention is still directed in a self-fulfilling way toward the activities that have always received attention. This is the safe bet, but safe bets don’t lead to progress…
The Outsourcing of Hyperlocal Journalism Is Inevitable
My conviction in the power of collaborative “glocal” journalism has not been swayed by the Journatic debacle. Properly managed, outsourcing some newsroom functions can be incredibly cost-effective and can contribute to the quality of a publication’s editorial content. Badly executed, outsourcing can become a plague that infects a publication’s journalistic integrity.