Street Fight Daily: Nextdoor’s Use Case, GroSocial Acquired
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Nextdoor’s Unexpected Killer Use Case: Crime and Safety (PandoDaily)
Crime and safety is increasingly becoming to Nextdoor what photos were to Facebook. That is to say, the thing that makes you join and makes sure you don’t quit.
Voice Media Group Enters Content Partnership With Foursquare (Street Fight)
Alt-weekly publisher Voice Media Group has announced a partnership with Foursquare that will make event content from VMG’s Voice Places initiative available to users of the location-based app. “This was a natural next step in terms of combining our curated local content with the experience that they provide around location and events,” Scott Tobias, CEO of Voice Media Group, told Street Fight.
Fresh From Its $54M Raise, Infusionsoft Acquires GroSocial, The “Buddy Media For SMBs,” To Expand Into Social Marketing (TechCrunch)
Infuisionsoft, the makers of a SaaS sales and marketing automation platform for small businesses, announced its second acquisition, scooping up Utah-based social media marketing startup, GroSocial, for an undisclosed sum. With the addition of GroSocial, Infusionsoft will be able to provide small business with the ability to convert the leads they generate through social media into customers.
Apple May Have the Hardware, But Google’s Winning Hyperlocal (Street Fight)
Alex Salkever: The hyperlocal interface will overwhelming revolve around a mobile experience with advertising and commerce tied to location and in-the-moment activities or sentiments. By ceding that real estate to Google with a sub-par user interface and experience, Apple is handicapping its future efforts to earn a significant chunk of that market.
Five Hyperlocal Marketing Trends to Take the Street Fight to the Next Level (AdAge)
The new thinking at the Street Fight Summit last week revolved around ideas that are attuned to the importance of balancing technology (of which there is an abundance) with the human element needed to create truly transformative business practices. Here are some takeaways from the key players.
Case Study: Texas Roadhouse Goes Local on Facebook (Street Fight)
Rather than creating a single Facebook page to serve as a hub for all 300 plus Texas Roadhouse locations, Dave Dodson and his team have created local Facebook pages for each restaurant in the national chain. Dodson says people are more likely to be engaged with local pages, leading to an increase in comments, likes, and photo submissions on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Foursquare.
Why Have (Local) Q&A Sites Largely Failed? (Screenwerk)
While there might be specific answers for the closures in each case overall there seems to be a pattern of falling short of expectations. Any consumer site or app needs sufficient usage to become sustainable but local apps are a particular challenge — because usage in Boston doesn’t translate equally into usage in Austin or San Diego.
How to Halt the Sad, Slow, Silent Retreat of Local Journalism (INMA)
In some ways, newspaper stories will begin to look more like broadcast stories, with only the big events being covered: crime, political scandals, revolutions, natural disasters, and major sports. But where will we find stories about our kids’ schools, or the taxes we’ll be paying next year, or the new development that is going to be built next to our neighborhood?
A Broken Bus-Arrival App Demonstrates a Key Problem With Open Government Data (Slate)
The failure of NextBus, an app that uses government transportation data to predict arrivals, demonstrates the ongoing issues in the push to put government data to use for the people. This information can transform the way people make decisions but only if it’s easily accessible.
Spraffl Launches As An Anonymous, Location-Based ‘Social Experiment’ (TechCrunch)
Spraffl is a new iOS app that’s attempting to buck the trend of real name policy, or even semi-identifiable pseudonyms, in favour of an entirely anonymous social network, tied to a user’s location. In some ways, an anti-social, social network, there’s no friending, following or check-ins, either — the whole point of Spraffl or, specifically, its content is that it is based purely on current location, uninhibited by identity or being linked to a user’s social graph.
How to Create a Hyperlocal News Resource (Wired)
What’s more local than local news? Emma Meese and Andy Williams, from the Centre for Community Journalism at Cardiff University, explain how to set up your own hyperlocal site.
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