Street Fight Daily: DMN’s Marketing Venture, Google Offers Exec Exits

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.

Dallas Morning News Partners With Slingshot to Create Speakeasy Marketing Service (Dallas Morning News)
The Dallas Morning News and Dallas advertising agency Slingshot LLC are launching a new marketing and promotions joint venture that will create and manage campaigns for local and national brands. Called Speakeasy, the agency will use social media such as Facebook and Twitter and will also have access to the complete archives of The News, allowing clients to post stories related to their products and services on their own sites.

Google Offers Exec Eric Rosenblum Leaves for Mobile Ad Start-Up (All Things D)
Eric Rosenblum, the director of product for Google Offers, has left the Groupon competitor to join Drawbridge, a mobile advertising start-up. In May, Rosenblum announced that Google had started to integrate Groupon-like offers into Google Maps and that it was trying out other advertising models for coupons and rewards programs.

Groupon Journeys Offshore for Customer Service (Wired)
As Groupon’s stock hovers near its all-time low, the company is testing a new approach to customer service: hiring agents in India to answer e-mails now handled by Chicago-based employees. The idea is to take advantage of timezone differences and handle e-mail inquiries around the clock. Groupon has no plans to reduce U.S. staff, a spokesperson says.

Chicago Tribune News Apps Team Launches ‘Crime in Chicago’ Data Project (10,000 Words)
The most recent project from The Chicago Tribune news apps team, Crime in Chicago, is a glowing example of the power of data in telling stories — and helping readers find their own stories in context of the big picture. You can type your address or select from a map your community of interest to see an extensive breakdown of crime reports for the most recent 30 days, crime type breakdowns, historic crime trends for the community and granular locations for crime (e.g. garages, alleys, grocery stores).

Restaurant Owner Slammed On Yelp For Supporting Obama (Search Engine Land)
Greg Sterling: After President Obama made a campaigning stop at Big Apple Pizza, some anti-Obama and anti-Big Apple “protestors” called for a boycott of the place and fire-breathing opinions began showing up on Yelp after the event. The central dilemma here is how to protect the relevance and integrity of the reviews, while allowing people to have a discussion or “dialog” with the business owner and each other.

Livestar’s Personalized Recommendation Service Wants To Disrupt Yelp, Rotten Tomatoes & Co. (TechCrunch)
Livestar, which is officially launching at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco today, wants to help you find personalized recommendations from your friends and authoritative sources around the web. The company argues that most of the major review sites like Yelp and Amazon are due for disruption, because they don’t offer personalized ratings and often suffer from low-quality reviews.

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