Street Fight Daily: Square Looks to Discovery, Mobile-Local Traffic Accelerates

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

coffee_bean-square-300Square Sets Its Sights on Check-ins: ‘We Can Do Something Better’ (Verge)
Square is using its trove of payment data to build an engine for making local recommendations, a move that could upend the conventional wisdom about luring customers through their mobile devices. The recommendation engine, which is already at work in the commerce startup’s merchant directory, will someday suggest places to visit based on a customer’s previous purchase history.

How Does Yelp Make Money and Where Is It Going Next? (Street Fight)
Michael Boland: Yelp combines the nimble and engineering-driven product focus of a Foursquare or Facebook, with the direct SMB sales of a YP. It’s a powerful combo that few companies have, and few people talk about in blogospheric proclamations of category killers.

Report: Mobile Traffic To Local Sites Growing Faster Than To Total Internet, Now At 27 Percent (SearchEngineLand)
The Local Search Association has released a new Local Mobile Search report, which affirms many of the big themes and trends in the market now: PC traffic is flat, mobile is gaining rapidly and mobile is heavily used for local search. The average percentage of mobile traffic (traffic from “non-PC” devices) to local sites grew to 27 percent in Q4 vs. the broader internet average of 15 percent.

7 Ways to Increase Engagement With Mobile Ads (Street Fight)
Marketers of all sizes are flocking to mobile ads in an effort to reach consumers on their home turf, sending targeted messages to smartphone users inside certain establishments (like coffee shops or bookstores) or within the confines of geotargeted perimeters. Here are seven ways that brands of all sizes can increase engagement with mobile ads.

Study: Daily Deals Sites are Bleeding Each Other Dry (PandoDaily)
According to data released from Onavo Insights, 64 percent of LivingSocial users also use Groupon, and 25 percent of Groupon users also use LivingSocial. Overlap between competitors isn’t always bad, but the daily deals market is shrinking, and Groupon and LivingSocial are only bleeding each other dry.

Head of Groupon Goods Faisal Masud is Leaving to Take a New Job (GigaOm)
Two months after firing its CEO, Groupon is facing another setback: The executive in charge of Groupon Goods, the part of the company that has provided a bright spot in an otherwise struggling daily deals business, has resigned, sources close to the situation have told us. Faisal Masud, the vice president of Groupon Goods, will be leaving the company later this month, the sources said.

TripAdvisor Taps TomTom’s to Bring Pinpoint Location Data to 200M Users (TheNextWeb)
Online travel behemoth TripAdvisor is to license TomTom’s global geocoder services to bring pinpoint accuracy to its location-based applications. For TripAdvisor’s 200M+ monthly visitors, this deal means they stand a better chance of finding the exact location of every hotel, bar or restaurant when writing reviews, or researching a venue they wish to visit themselves.

Wi-Fi Indoor Positioning Firm YFind Launches Analytics Tool (TechCrunch)
Prepping for its US expansion, Singapore-based indoor positioning technology firm YFind has launched a broader analytics tool so that its customers can slice and dice foot traffic information in malls. The company’s service tracks unique visitors as they move through a mall. It relies on Wi-Fi to do this, so it can track users who have their Wi-Fi turned on on their phones.

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