Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s New Feed, Plum District Founder Out
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Don’t Laugh at Zuckerberg’s Newspaper Metaphor, It’s More Accurate Than You Think (PandoDaily)
Facebook founder and hoodie-wearing CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims that local newspapers influenced the newly redesigned News Feed. He even compared today’s update to a local newspaper, the nonexistent Monterey Daily, much to the bewilderment of the tech press.
Limits on Behavioral Ads Could Give Publishers More Control (Street Fight)
Matt Sokoloff: As limits arise on behavioral ads, endemic sites (or sites with actionable user data) can essentially become ad networks. If browser limits mean that Cars.com can no longer sell its data, then the opportunity exists for the company itself to develop a platform to sell audience extension.
CEO And Founder Megan Gardner Out At Mom-Centric Deals Site Plum District, Ex-Googler Susan Kim Takes Over (TechCrunch)
Founder and CEO of Plum District, Megan Gardner, has left her position at the company, according to the Plum District website and LinkedIn. Susan Kim, formerly at Google, eBay and Minted, will be taking over the role. Last we heard, a few rounds of layoffs had brought into question the sustainability of daily deals as a market, as well as leadership strategies within the company.
With New Self-Serve Product, Weather Channel Eyes SMB Spend (Street Fight)
Late last week the company began piloting a new self-serve interface in a move to open its advertising platform to small and medium-sized business — a new market for the company. Built on top of PaperG’s white-label interface, the product is still in its early days.
AOL’s CEO to Haters: Our Content Strategy Was Right After All (and Patch is Fine Too) (Paid Content)
Back from near-death, AOL feels vindicated that it bet on a content strategy when everyone else was turning to platforms and technology. CEO Tim Armstrong shared some thoughts on content, hyper-local site Patch and whether AOL might buy Time’s magazines.
Venture Capital Firm Matrix Nabs Young Star from Square (Reuters)
Venture capital firm Matrix Partners said it had hired 28-year-old Jared Fliesler, an executive at the mobile-payments company Square, as general partner. Matrix had been talking to Fliesler for about the last year, said general partner Dana Stadler, who believes Fliesler will be able to give good advice to early-stage companies, Matrix’s focus area.
Technology Turns to Tracking People Offline (New York Times)
Following people online, with cookies, tagged pixels and even voluntarily given information, has been a big business. Now much of the same technology is moving into the physical world. A company called Euclid Analytics uses the Wi-Fi antennas inside stores to see how many people are coming into a store, how long they stay and even which aisles they walk.
What Became of Highlight, Last Year’s SXSW Darling? (Wall Street Journal)
One of the most buzzed about startups at last year’s South By Southwest festival was Highlight, creator of a social-networking app with the same name. But unlike Twitter and Foursquare – which exploded into the mainstream not long after launching marketing campaigns there in years past – Highlight has yet to take off in a similar fashion. Its fleeting fame underscores the difficulty that startup founders face in turning hype from the festival into long-term success.
Report: Local-Mobile Ad Targeting Offers Big Performance Lift (Marketing Land)
Greg Sterling: Mobile ad network xAd joined the “year in review” club, releasing a report showcasing a year’s worth of data from ad campaigns on its network. The bottom line: location targeting, whether in search or display, improves performance over standard mobile search and display advertising.
Google’s Location-Based Field Trip App Comes to iOS (PC Mag)
Google today unveiled its Field Trip app for iOS, which pulls in information about nearby attractions from blogs, deals sites, an user reviews, Google’s own Zagat service, and more. Field Trip was built by Niantic Labs, a mobile apps development team within Google, to provide “a virtual local tour guide” that serves up everything from restaurant and shopping suggestions to history and architecture tidbits.
PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — CrowdOptic (Street Fight)
In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan look at Guardly’s indoor emergency services; Banjo is chosen by Google+; Qualcomm’s greatest location advertising campaign ever; Hot Wheels tweets for Cameros; Sonar introduces us to the Bing Fund; and Andrew Mason shows his character.
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