Street Fight Daily: Angie’s List Rolls, More Consolidation in Deals

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

Angie’s List is Killing It: Revenue, Members, Growth — and Stock Price — All Up (VentureBeat)
All the indicators are going in the right direction as modern-day yellow pages Angie’s List, which helps people find trustworthy carpenters, dentists, mechanics, and more, reported its first quarter results today. Revenues were up 68 percent to $52.2 million, paid memberships were up 60 percent year-over-year — hitting two million just two days ago — and its cost-per-acquisition was down 12 percent.

Do Community News Sites Really Need to Become ‘Digital Agencies?’ (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: For answers, I went to Julie Brooks, CEO of eCape.com, who went into and then out of, an ambitious program of agency-like marketing services; Mike Orren, president of the new marketing service firm Speakeasy, which he co-founded with the Dallas Morning News; and Carll Tucker, CEO of Daily Voice, who is considering expansion of marketing services it offers.

Tippr Is Acquired by nCrowd in Further Consolidation of the Online Deals Space (AllThingsD)
Atlanta-based nCrowd, which owns social deals sites HalfOffDepot.com and CrowdSavings.com, has bought the assets of Seattle’s Tippr.com and Groupalicious.com. Tippr, which launched several years ago, focused on creating a platform for itself and others for groups of online consumers buying together to get discounts on a range of products, by purchasing patents around aggregating demand from Mercata, a failed group-buying startup from Web 1.0.

Case Study: California Fitness Studio Drives Referrals With Digital Program (Street Fight)
Ninety-two percent of consumers trust “earned media” — like word-of-mouth referrals — above other forms of paid advertising. At b2be Sports & Wellness, a high-end fitness studio in Chula Vista, California, Emmanuel Corona is looking to capitalize on this trend, partnering with Perkville to reward customers for referring their friends.

Groupon Pits Itself Against Location-based Services with App Update (Mobile Commerce Daily)
As companies such as foursquare, Facebook and Yelp increasingly roll out more comprehensive location-based offerings, Groupon is striking back by adding a universal search feature to its iPhone and Android applications. The new search feature is being rolled out to Groupon’s mobile apps to help consumers sort through the company’s growing inventory of deals.

Re-imagining Journalism in The Wired City (Huffington Post)
In his new book The Wired City, Journalist blogger and professor Dan Kennedy asks, and answers, an important question: Does the digital information revolution presage the end of news, or simply the end of newspapers? Kennedy finds reason for optimism, and his well-researched and informative look at one small not-for-profit new journalistic enterprise, an online-only neighborhood-oriented news site in Connecticut called the New Haven Independent, offers ample hope for an uncertain future.

Visa and Fandango Mobilize Buying Movie Tickets (AdAge)
Visa and Fandango today are extending their three-year digital partnership with a feature called Tixpress in the latter company’s mobile app. In a promotion running through August, Visa Signature cardholders have the exclusive chance to sign up to get location-based movie listings and a quick-pay option via Fandango’s popular smartphone app.

Hearsay Social Brings Its Social Media Tools To Europe With New London Office (TechCrunch)
Hearsay Social, a Sequoia- and NEA-backed company that helps large organizations manage their social media presence across local branches and sales teams, is announcing that it has opened an office in London. Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Steve Garrity said it is the first step in the company’s European expansion.

Tim Cook on Mobile Payments: ‘It’s In Its Infancy’ (MacRumors)
Tim Cook was asked during Apple’s earnings call about his feelings regarding the mobile payments market. While he didn’t address the topic directly, he did note that the mobile payments were “just getting started” and still “in its infancy.”

Nara Introduces Digital DNA, Allows Consumers to Combine Highly-Personalized Restaurant Recommendations (PandoDaily)
Nara Logics has spent the better part of three years building the artificial intelligence necessary to deliver personally relevant search results. The company believes that it is no longer good enough to deliver the most universally relevant results to a given search query, but rather that it’s necessary to deliver results tailored to the individual user’s tastes, preferences, and interests.

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