Seeking to Connect With Restaurants, Foodspotting Launches ‘Rewards’

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While a number of apps allow users to rate restaurants, leave comments, and create a map of what’s nearby, San Francisco-based Foodspotting focuses its attention on the food itself — and on helping food seekers find the specific dish they want nearby. Street Fight recently spoke with Foodspotting founder and CEO Alexa Andrzejewski about the company’s push into local marketing…

Riding Shotgun in Consumers’ Cars, Apple Could Close the Loop

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Earlier this week, General Motors announced plans to integrate iOS devices into its on-dash infotainment system, bringing Apple’s virtual assistant Siri to a handful of its smaller vehicles early next year. Siri integration mixed with maps and a rumored radio product could provide Apple with the necessary footing to make a dent in local advertising and finally turn around its inert iAd network…

Openings & New Hires at Patch, MapQuest, Local.com, and More

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At JiWire, another departure; Patch brings on a few new department heads; UBL and Delivery.com continue to add to their teams. Plus, longtime Borrell Associates executive Peter Conti makes the jump to Local Media Association, and JT Batson becomes chief revenue officer at Cumulus Media. Looking for a new gig? Openings at Local.com, Patch, Microsoft, Google and more…

PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — Esquire, GetGlue

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In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan look at jeans that check-in for you; Esquire jumps the gap between magazine and digital; and is Foursquare’s new valuation too high? Plus news from GetGlue, a new Apple patent on location and a clip from the archives with Holger Luedorf, VP mobile and international at Foursquare…

Street Fight Daily: Mason Stays, LivingSocial Speeds to a Halt

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Groupon CEO Mason to Stay After Directors Discuss His Tenure (Businessweek)… LivingSocial Learns Speeding Doesn’t Pay  (The Wall Street Journal)… Hyperlocal Ads Are Linchpin to Holiday Mobile Search Auccess (Mobile Marketer)…

Memo to Hyperlocal Editors: You Too Can Be a Nate Silver

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As I watched Nate Silver achieve such success analyzing numbers during the election, I asked myself: Can hyperlocal news sites learn anything from FiveThirtyEight? The question is pertinent because numbers of all kind — far beyond those from polling and elections — are gushing from local governments, but not many of them are showing up in meaningful ways on community sites…

Can Businesses Use Hyperlocal to Leverage Customers’ Politics?

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There has been significant coverage about the differences in Democrats and Republicans, but to date there hasn’t been any analysis on real world activities associated with political affiliation. From grocery stores to restaurants, from retailers to gas stations, voting Democrat or Republican plays a part in which establishments we step foot in and which ones we don’t…

Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Layoffs, Google Buys Couponer

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.LivingSocial expected to lay off 400 in U.S. (Washington Business Journal)…
Google Buys ‘Coupon’ Platform Incentive Targeting For Closed-Loop Marketing (Screenwerk)… The Story Of Adku, And Why Andrew Mason Isn’t The Problem At Groupon (TechCrunch)…

Groupon’s Mason: It Would Be ‘Weird’ If Board Wasn’t Discussing My Job

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“There’s no question that we’ve had bumps in the road, but Groupon has created not just a business, but an entirely new category,” said the CEO. “If I ever thought I wasn’t the right guy for the job, I would be the first guy to fire myself. I care much more about the success of Groupon than being CEO.”

The Steaks in Square’s Future

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Back in June, social/local analyst Rocky Agrawal bet Reuters financial journalist Felix Salmon a steak dinner that Square would be acquired by a company other than PayPal in 2012. At this point, a sale seems pretty unlikely before the end of the year — and I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. So if someone wants to bet me that Square gets acquired before this time in 2013, I’ll take that bet…

A Quick Guide to SMB Success on Mobile

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Less than 5 percent of local businesses have a website optimized for mobile devices. In some cases, a company’s site isn’t even “findable” through searches on mobile devices. Worse, consumers, when they do find the local business’s website, can only see a desktop-specific version. Here are a few tips to help demystify mobile for business owners and help them get started right away…

Conference Notebook: Yelp ‘Focused,’ Foursquare Denies Slower Growth

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It doesn’t look like Yelp has plans to push across the local marketing stack anytime soon. Responding to a question of whether Yelp planned to position itself as a local operating system for local business like Groupon, CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said it was “hard to say what tangential businesses [Yelp would] get into” but “its safe to say we’re focused.”

Street Fight Daily: Groupon CEO on Hot Seat, Apple Maps Manager Out

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Is Andrew Mason on the Bubble as CEO of Groupon? (AllThingsD)… What Kinds of Local Stories Drive Engagement? The Results of an NPR Facebook Experiment (Nieman Lab)… Apple Fires a Manager Over Its Misfire on Maps (New York Times/Bits)…

How Mobile’s Demographic Shift Impacts Local

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It seems that young people in the 18-24 demographic spend, on average, more time on mobile devices today than they do watching television. It also appears that mobile usage is far ahead of “playing games and computer use for leisure.” What does this mean for the future of local search and local media? I would say it’s not unlike the lessons the Republican Party was forced to confront in the aftermath of its recent election defeat…

Wifarer CEO: Indoor Location Is a Multibillion-Dollar Market

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Indoor mapping has the potential to become a big business. But it’s early days and big questions are still looming — particularly regarding Apple. Last year the tech giant closed off iOS’ wifi API, the data most companies use to determine a user’s position indoors, dealing a major blow to a number of startups. Street Fight recently caught up with Phillip Stanger, the CEO of indoor mapping startup Wifarer, to discuss why indoor location matters for marketers and how companies can navigate around Apple’s obstruction…

5 Hyperlocal Tools to Help Retailers Curb Showrooming

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The biggest threat to the average local retailer this holiday season isn’t the big box store down the street, but the e-commerce outlet selling the same products for less money online. In an effort to help curb “showrooming” and entice customers to make more in-store purchases, local retailers are increasingly utilizing hyperlocal solutions. Here are five tools that retailers can use in their efforts…

Street Fight Daily: DNAinfo Launches in Chicago, Zillow Acquires HotPads

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.After a Few Twists, DNAinfo Officially Launches (Crain’s Chicago Business)… Zillow Acquires Rental And Real Estate Search Site HotPads For $16 Million To Grow Its Rental Marketplace (TechCrunch)… Not Just Another Web 2.0 Company, Yelp Basks In Its Star Power (Fast Company)…

Mobile-Local Shopping Comes Into Focus

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Customers are getting poached right under retailers’ noses by Amazon and the rest of the showrooming brigade. So what are retailers doing to combat these challenges as we enter the biggest shopping season in the biggest year of local retail transformation since the invention of the department store? The results so far are mixed…

PaperG CEO on the Mobile Opportunity for Small Publishers

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For hyperlocal publishers, mobile may or may not be an imminent priority today — but it’s critical that they have a plan for tomorrow. Street Fight caught up with Victor Wong, CEO of local ad tech platform PaperG and former co-chairman of the IAB local committee, to discuss how local publishers can best tackle mobile in 2013…

Local Social Spend Projected to Hit $2.95 Billion by 2016

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Local spend on social media in the U.S. is set to jump 1.7x by 2016, according to the Fall Update to BIA/Kelsey’s Social Local Media Forecast. The numbers show a slight reduction in the firm’s earlier projections, which had put the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for local social spend at 28.9%…