Street Fight Daily: Shopkick Rebuilds App, LocalVox Raises $7.4M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Shopkick Totally Recreates Its Shopping App. Gamification Out, Design and Content In (Pando Daily)
Shopkick is launching a massive redesign — the result of nine months of daily product meetings. Gone are the gamification aspects to the site that were so hot in the market a few years ago. Now it’s all about design and big images and commerce as content.
LocalVox Raises $7.4M for One-Stop Shop for Local Marketing (GigaOm)
LocalVox, a New York-based startup that targets small- to medium-sized businesses with a comprehensive online marketing platform, has raised $7.4 million in Series A funding. The company currently operates in New York and Hartford but plans to scale to 20 markets nationwide.
Buy Reviews on Yelp, Get Black Mark (New York Times)
Like every Web site that depends on consumer critiques, Yelp has a problem with companies trying to manipulate their results. So it set up a sting operation to catch them. The first eight businesses — including a moving company, two repair shops and a concern that organizes treasure hunts — will find themselves exposed on Thursday.
Klout Perks Up Online, Offline Worlds (AdWeek)
Klout is looking to get influencers to carry their more solid score with them outside of Klout and be rewarded for doing so. The company is baking Perks into its iPhone app so that users can be notified and claim a Perk without a computer in sight through integration with Apple’s new Passbook app.
Local Advertising Grows at Media General, 3rd Quarter Earnings Report Shows (Poynter)
Advertising revenue was up 20 percent at Media General’s TV station websites, where local advertising in particular was up 28 percent. Across its properties, local advertising revenue was up 15.6 percent, to $47 million.
Chris Terrill Discusses ServiceMagic’s Rebranding to ‘Home Advisor’ (Local Onliner)
A few years ago, it became apparent that IAC’s ServiceMagic had stalled. Now the company has pushed the reset button under the leadership of Chris Terrill, who’d served executive stints at Nutrisystem, Blockbuster and Match.com.
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