Street Fight Daily: Foursquare’s Round, Apple’s New Patent

Share this:

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

Investors Cool on Foursquare (The Wall Street Journal)
Foursquare is having a hard time convincing investors that it is worth that much money as it looks to raise around $50 million, people familiar with the discussions said. Potential investors aren’t convinced the company is moving quickly enough to make money and are concerned that the use of its free service — which helps people find and alert others to their presence at places like bars and restaurants — is starting to slow, the people said.

Apple Patents a System-Wide Event-Tracking And Geotagging System For iOS Devices (TechCrunch)
We’ve seen a few apps try to manage the ambitious feat of becoming the journal for your entire mobile life, but a new Apple patent suggests the company may be trying to build that kind of functionality right into iOS at the system level, in a way that keeps track of all your phone events, including when and where they happened. The system could help you recall when and where you took a photo, sent an email, received a phone call or even visited a webpage, and show that to you on a map or in a timeline-style list of events.

Three-way Tie-up Promises to Re-Invent Local News (Paid Content)
The industry has been ravaged by cutbacks and an ad downturn. Now three UK local news publishers confirm they are coming together to improve digital news. But can they deliver on the promise?

Highlight Launches on Android and Brings Better Profiles, ‘High Fives’, and More to Its iOS App (The Next Web)
Armed with an updated design, new buttons, backgrounds, navigation controls, animations, and what it says is “cleaner overall aesthetics”, the company hopes that people will find it more useful and more engaging than ever before. While you might think of the service along the same route as Banjo (which recently announced its own news), Glancee, Sonar, EchoEcho, and many others, co-founder Paul Davison tells us public perception about Highlight is all wrong — it’s not about meeting people, but rather about how the world sees you.

Kon*Fab Wants to Break the Filter Bubble by Finding Location-based News (Nieman Lab)
Kon*Fab, a new project funded by the Knight Foundation, aims in some small way to inject serendipity, conversation, and physical space into news. A part of the foundation’s Prototype Fund, the Kon*Fab app would use geolocation and online discussions to unearth stories a reader might not be familiar with.

Shopkick Sees Big Traffic, Engagement Bump After Major Redesign (TechCrunch)
Engagement with the app, which rewards consumers for walking into a store, has skyrocketed since the redesign. Users have reviewed products more than 340 million times, which amounts to over 100 products per user per day. If this engagement keeps up, Shopkick will reach 1 billion product views within 12 weeks.

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

Tags: