Street Fight Daily: Reviving Verticals, The Battle for Indoors
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
CityGrid’s Finger Bets on Vertical Revival (Local Onliner)
Peter Krasilovsky: The vertical revolution in local never happened — at least to the extent that we envisioned it. There have been many successful vertical breakouts, but a lot of the vertical vision has been preempted by horizontal media that have incorporated verticalization. Going forward, CityGrid Media CEO Jason Finger thinks that’s wrong-headed.
Yipit Co-Founder: Hyperlocal Is Coming to Be Defined By ‘Marketplaces’ (Street Fight)
“I think what would surprise most people is that the ‘daily deal’ industry is actually stable and increasing,” Jim Moran told Street Fight. “By this point the vast majority of revenue is driven by repeat customers, both on the consumer and the merchant size. One time users have moved on over a year ago, and the market will now grow as offer quality and user experience continues to improve. … The only thing surprising to me about the daily deal industry is that we still haven’t been able to agree on a better name for it.”
The Battle for Indoors (Business Insider)
Charlie O’Donnell: Companies like Belly and Shopkick are making real business progress towards bringing retailers together with customers. In the face of “software eating the mall” companies, they’re helping make the retail shopping experience better for the hundreds of millions of humans who still walk around outside and occasionally go into physical stores.
Study: 81% of Consumers Search for Restaurants on Mobile Apps (Street Fight)
A new report released by SinglePlatform and Chadwick Martin Bailey finds that more consumers have searched for a restaurant on their web browser in the past six months than have done so on a mobile app. Meanwhile, 75 percent of consumers said they were more likely to dine at a restaurant based on the results of their searches.
The Texas Tribune: Building a Model for Sustainable Local Journalism (Knight Foundation)
Less than three years after launch, The Texas Tribune has become one of the most successful experiments in nonprofit online news. The model has allowed the nonprofit to diversify its revenue stream away from grants-only and into corporate sponsorships and signature events. In 2012, the Tribune had more than 5.7 million individual visitors to its award-winning enterprise reporting site and interactive databases.
Case Study: KBP Foods Uses Loyalty App to Reach Millennials (Street Fight)
Customers between the ages of 18 and 34 are eating out less than they were five years ago, which is a major problem for executives like Anthony Gianino. The senior director of marketing at KBP Foods is trying everything in the book — including text message marketing, local print ads, and mobile loyalty apps — to reach his target demographic.
BIA/Kelsey: How to Sell to SMBs (NetNewsCheck)
BIA/Kelsey on Wednesday rolled out a new report that offers a detailed look at six media companies whose sales operations have undergone some degree of change. The firm found that the companies making progress selling digital to SMBs share common traits, including the “segmentation of sales channels, innovation around training, and a focus on driving the business on customer-centric key performance indicators.”
Ness Updates Its iOS app, a Personalized Dining Guide for You (GigaOm)
Ness first came out with its free iOS app in 2011, but has gone back and improved the ability to predict what users will like. The app is a slick, beautifully designed way of helping you determine where to eat by asking you a few questions to get an idea of what you like and don’t like. It then adapts and learns from how you continue to use the app. Think of it like Pandora or Zite, but for eating out.
Amazon Eyes Anonymous Mobile Payments System (CNET)
Amazon may be cooking up its own anonymous mobile payments system. Published yesterday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Amazon patent application appropriately dubbed “Anonymous mobile payments” describes a system that would let mobile users pay for items without having to reveal their name, phone number, e-mail address, or other personal details to the seller.
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