Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Losses, Facebook Offers Pick Up

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

livingsocial-logoLivingSocial Records Net Loss of $650 million for 2012 (The Washington Post)
The company recorded a net loss of $650 million for 2012, according to a regulatory filing, putting a lackluster cap on 12 months that saw its once-meteoric rise slow significantly. Amazon has invested as much as $200 million in the company during its period of speedy growth.

Case Study: Jelmar Reaches Younger Demo With Location-Based Promotion (Street Fight)
The cleaning products manufacturer ran a promotion last year with inMarket’s CheckPoints mobile app, which rewarded customers for scanning CLR and CLR Bath & Kitchen products with their smartphones. As a result, Jelmar saw an immediate uptick in sales at stores where the mobile promotion ran.

Facebook Offers Have Been Claimed By 42M Users (TechCrunch)
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg highlighted the growth that Facebook Offers has seen since it launched last year — she said that offers have been claimed by 42 million unique users. Sandberg said that 100,000 small- and medium-sized businesses have used the Offers product.

Humanizing ‘Dry’ Data Is Only Part of the Challenge for Community News (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: I’m utterly convinced that data will be the salvation of community news sites, both in delivering more audience-engaging content and doing it cost-effectively. But the big problem in community journalism is not data that’s dry and creepy. It’s data that’s incomplete, badly formatted, sloppily collected or – most serious of all – withheld.

Time to Retire the Term ‘HyperLocal’ (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: The term ‘Hyperlocal’ was originally used to articulate a value proposition suggesting the content of the particular news or directory site was truly or genuinely local. Now it’s a term that confuses people and its overuse has made the term somewhat opaque and even empty.

What We Mean When We Talk About ‘Hyperlocal’ (Street Fight)
Laura Rich: When we launched Street Fight, we expanded the term “hyperlocal” from its traditional use pertaining only to passionate, driven, highly local publishers who were the first to act on the erosion of local media’s business. We have applied it to include anyone who is disrupting and taking market share from traditional media and offering local businesses new ways to reach consumers.

Angie’s List Merchants Can Now Accept Payments with Square (GigaOm)
Consumer review service Angie’s List is integrating Square technology into its iPhone app, allowing merchants like house cleaners, plumbers and painters to accept credit card payments in the field.

Andreessen Predicts the Death of Traditional Retail. Yes: Absolute Death (PandoDaily)
“Retail guys are going to go out of business and ecommerce will become the place everyone buys. You are not going to have a choice,” Andreessen says. “We’re still pre-death of retail, and we’re already seeing a huge wave of growth. The best in class are going to get better and better.”

Mobile to Offer Exclusive, Location-based Content for Fashion Week (Luxury Daily)
“Smartphones are the great equalizer when it comes to big events like New York Fashion Week,” per Kendra Bracken-Ferguson, co-founder and managing director at Digital Brand Architects, New York. “It’s a tool that allows for immediate engagement and sharing with fashion press, style influencers and eager consumers alike.”

Nokia Chalks Up In-Car Maps Win Against Google, Signs Toyota Motor Europe To Use HERE Local Search (TechCrunch)
Nokia’s rebranded HERE mapping service has snagged another car-maker — signing Toyota Motor Europe to use Nokia Local Search for Automotive for its Touch & Go in-car navigation and infotainment systems. As well as digital maps, Nokia’s service will bring community-generated content to the in-car systems — including “millions” of ratings, reviews and images.

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