Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Hires CMO, Patch Talks Profitability
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Former Best Buy CMO Barry Judge Joins LivingSocial to Head Marketing (AllThingsD)
LivingSocial has appointed former Best Buy CMO Barry Judge to the position of chief marketing officer. Judge headed up marketing at the electronics retailer for four years, until May, when he resigned to explore new opportunities.
Social Isn’t Search: Why Apple Should Think Twice About Foursquare (Street Fight)
Damian Rollison: Though the cachet of the Foursquare name might make this idea sound appealing, my sense is that it could only be executed successfully if handled very carefully by Apple. With the prominence already given to socially driven results from Yelp, Apple would risk becoming a search service dominated by social content.
AOL Says One Out of Nine Patch Sites Profitable (SmartMoney)
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said Monday about 100 of the company’s 900 Patch sites are now profitable, as the Internet media firm seeks to use its costly local online news network to help fuel an ongoing turnaround effort.
Daily Deals: Still Lucrative for Local Publishers (Street Fight)
Matt Coen: Given the challenges facing pure-play daily deal companies (and the saturation of news stories chronicling their issues), a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the deals space is experiencing a major downturn. Recent studies, however, suggest a more bullish outlook for deals in 2013.
A Dire Prediction For Foursquare, With a Big Asterisk (Forbes)
Jeff Bercovici: PrivCo, the data and research firm that specializes in covering private companies, thinks the startup is doomed. In a list of 10 predictions for 2013 sent to clients today, PrivCo forecasts the failure of the location-based social city guide and its acquisition, at a fire-sale price, within the next 12 months.
Glympsing the Rise of the Connected Car (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: So-called “connected cars” are basically becoming rolling smartphones, which will increasingly provide hands-free access to many mobile apps. How advertising and marketing will be handled in these contexts has yet to be fully thought through, but everything-old-is-new-again models such as audio ads (think Pandora) or video will probably find their way to a car dashboard near you in the not-too-distant future.
Waze Ended 2012 with 34 million Users and Expects to Double that by the End of this Year (The Next Web)
Waze, the Israeli company behind the community-based traffic and navigation smartphone app with the same name, has announced on its blog that it attracted a total of 34 million users in 2012. That is up from 28 million users at the end of October 2012, and up from 10 million users at the beginning of last year.
Yes, It’s True: Location and Consumer Privacy Can Co-Exist (Huffington Post)
David Rush: Critical to marketers using location properly is paying attention to the privacy requirements of their audiences and respecting how to connect with them in a way that is welcomed and non-intrusive. Nielsen reported in 2011 that over half of mobile users reported having privacy concerns with location-based services apps.
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