Street Fight Daily: Waze Talks Collapse, Wikipedia Launches ‘Nearby’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Facebook Acquisition Talks With Waze Fall Apart (AllThingsD)
After months of negotiations, Facebook is no longer in talks to acquire Waze, the Israel-based social mapping and navigation startup, according to sources familiar with the matter. The talks dissolved in recent days, according to sources, due in part to conflicts over whether or not the Waze team — which is predominantly based in Israel — would move over to the United States and fold itself into Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, among other reasons.
Report: Pureplays Using Legacy Media as a Farm System for Sales Staff (Street Fight)
Terry Heaton: Local media companies need to do something to protect their digital sales assets or run the risk of losing them to pureplay web companies, according to a new report from Borrell Associates. Pureplays offer starting salaries in the range of $12,500 per year more than their nearest competitors, the local TV stations. The gap between starting pureplay sales people and those who work for newspapers is an incredible $21,000 more.
Wikipedia Debuts ‘Nearby’ Feature to Find Pages Around You (VentureBeat)
Encyclopedia-of-everything Wikipedia has launched a new Nearby page for the web and mobile devices that shows information about locales that are close to you. The Wikimedia Foundation has been testing the applications tying location data with pages since January, when it added a new GeoData extension for MediaWiki to promised to provide geo-coordinates for many articles.
‘Indie’ Hyperlocals Share the Secrets to Their Sustainability (Street Fight)
“Content remains king. So long as you don’t lose sight of that, much of the rest falls into place,” said Sheepshead Bites editor and publisher Ned Berke. “But, content doesn’t pay the bills, so we’re always looking at ways to improve the services we offer to merchant partners and other revenue opportunities.”
As Software Trumps Hardware In The World Of Payments, VeriFone Partners With CardSpring For Card-Linked Services (TechCrunch)
Verifone has cut a deal with CardSpring, a payments startup founded by former Netscape engineers, which will allow thousands of merchants to enable loyalty programs, point-of-sale discounts, and more using customers’ existing debit and credit cards. Unlike card-linked competitors edo and Cartera, CardSpring is not a merchant-facing platform itself.
FiveStars Partners With Rogers in Canada, Launches ‘Vicinity’ (Street Fight)
FiveStars and Canadian media giant Rogers Communications have launched a new local customer loyalty service called Vicinity, which represents the California-based company’s first foray into international markets.
Think Mobile Is Big Now? Here’s Proof That It’s Just Getting Started (ReadWrite)
Dan Rowinski: So, you think that the Mobile Revolution is complete and the battle between smartphones and PCs is all but won? Think again. According to the newest edition of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers analyst Mary Meeker’s infamous Internet Trends report, mobile traffic still only makes up 15% of all worldwide Internet traffic. That is less than one-sixth of all time spent on the Internet.
Case Study: Overcoming Obstacles When Redeeming Mobile Deals (Street Fight)
Digital offers have proven to be an effective driver for customer acquisition, but the infrastructure required to redeem mobile coupons is something that many businesses — and particularly local restaurants — still don’t have in place. Not having the mechanism to scan barcodes prevented Sea Island Restaurant Group from offering digital coupons at its eight Sea Island Shrimp House and Tiago’s Cabo Grille locations, until recently.
Users Clearly Prefer Local to E-Commerce (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: The majority of online users conduct e-commerce. Whether they’re teens or adults most Americans buy things online. However the data show pretty consistently and clearly that the majority of e-commerce shoppers also prefer to buy in stores.
Facebook’s Sandberg Says Ad Network And Maps Would Be Nice, But Not A Priority (TechCrunch)
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg claims Facebook has no plans to build an offsite ad network or a mapping feature, even though they’d be nice to have. Today at the D11 Conference, Sandberg reiterated that Facebook is squarely focused on mobile, and can’t distract itself.
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