Street Fight Daily: DNAinfo Preps Expansion, Google Rethinks Local Discovery

Share this:

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

Joe Ricketts Ready to Launch DNAinfo in Chicago (Chicago Business Journal)
The patriarch of an increasingly famous and very rich Ricketts clan, Pops Ricketts is bringing one of his pet projects to Chicago: DNAinfo.com. It’s a neighborhood news and information Web site that offers visitors a vast menu of hyperlocal city news all gathered together in one place.

A New Google App Gives You Local Information — Before You Ask for It (New York Times)
Google has created a new mobile app that gives people facts about the places around them — unprompted, without the need to even ask for the information. The app, Field Trip, offers historical trivia about a park, an architectural factoid about a building or reviews of a nearby restaurant.

Amazon Could Be Working On A Square Competitor (TechCrunch)
Rumors have been coming in that Amazon is readying a mobile payments product that could compete with Square, Intuit GoPayment and PayPal Here. A tipster and an industry source both tell us that Amazon is going after smaller chains of retailers for the product, and could be offering significantly lower credit card processing fees for merchants.

Locu Seeks to Unlock the Power of the Mobile Web for Local Businesses (Forbes)
Locu CEO Rene Reinsberg and his three co-founders believe they’ve created a better service for small business by creating the world’s largest real-time, small-business information database. The company just released its new Data API to allow developers the ability to create innovative ways to access and display their data.

Groupon Reshuffles Execs, Seeks To Fix Europe Business (Reuters)
Groupon is reshuffling senior management roles in an attempt to fix its struggling European business — a shake-up that will also include the departure of its chief of international business. Fixing its European operations has become an imperative for Groupon after the second-quarter revealed big problems with that business, driving the company’s already weak share price even lower.

Reply Awl (Digital Man)
Jim Brady: I meant to respond to Brett Sokol’s piece in The Awl last week, but needed some time to address the writer’s numerous errors and mischaracterizations, not to mention the overall tone, which emphasized turning a phrase over picking up a phone. Once we get past the quality of the Independent and of our web design, any agreement — and, apparently, any reporting on Sokol’s part — ends.

Get Street Fight Daily in your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletter.

Tags: