Street Fight Daily: Waze Gets Social, LivingSocial Fallout Continues
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Waze Gets More Social, Helps Users Share Location and Connect (GigaOm)
Crowd-sourced mapping and navigation app Waze is getting a lot more social by allowing people to share their location, request rides and see which friends are navigating to the same place. Now, with an update to version 3.5, Waze users on iOS and Android can sign-in with Facebook and see when friends are navigating to the same place and get their estimated time of arrival.
LivingSocial May Need a Deal of Its Own (The Wall Street Journal)
December’s financing round was supposed to raise as much as $400 million, but a person familiar with LivingSocial’s finances says the company wasn’t able to raise much more than the first $176 million tranche of that round. According to this person, the company has less than $100 million in the bank after raising a total of more than $800 million. It burned about $25 million of cash in the third quarter.
Zillow Acquires Real Estate Shopping And Collaboration Platform For Brokers And Homebuyers, Buyfolio (TechCrunch)
Real estate search giant Zillow has acquired Buyfolio, an online and mobile collaborative shopping platform where New York home shoppers can search, track, organize and discuss for-sale listings with their real estate agent, significant other or a private group. Zillow says the acquisition furthers its strategy of adding tools and services for professionals and home buyers.
Hyperlocal Pureplays Try to Catch On in Digital New York (NetNewsCheck)
In New York’s hyperactive media market, one hyperlocal pureplay stands above the rest: The Gothamist. While The Gothamist has succeeded in pulling in a large audience, most of the market’s hyperlocal pureplays are small shops looking at different ways to generate revenue, including turning back to print.
LocBox Pulls in $5.1M to Put the Nail in the Daily Deals Coffin (Venture Beat)
LocBox wants to be the alternative to Groupon, Living Social and the host of flash sales sites, and has raised over $5 million in its quest to win over small businesses. The idea is that Groupon and the like can pull customers into a store to pick up a one-off promotion, but they can’t drive long-term loyalty.
One Year In, Nextdoor, The Social Network For Neighborhoods, Talks Numbers (TechCrunch)
This time last year marked the debut of Nextdoor, a site that allows people to build private online social networks for their local neighborhoods. According to the company’s CEO Nirav Tolia, Nextdoor now has users in more than 5500 neighborhoods that span across all 50 states, and more than 300,000 member messages are traded on the site every single day.