Street Fight Daily: Patch Sees Social Growth, Consumers Warm to Mobile Wallets
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Hyperlocal Social News On Patch (SearchEngineLand)
Will Scott: Since the beginning of the year, the site has seen a massive uptick in social media mentions, in part continuing the general uptick in age of social media-savvy groups. But even before it, it was becoming a source of unfiltered local news after Hurricane Sandy that seemed to push the site over the edge — over 26% of Patch’s 98,000 recorded tweets on Topsy at year’s end came in the last month.
The Local Search Shadow Economy (Street Fight)
Damian Rollison: We know that there exist a great number of businesses in our local communities that service a variety of needs at their clients’ homes or business locations. Aside from specialized services like Angie’s List and Service Magic, there are few local search outlets that serve potential clients or service providers well in terms of their ability to connect a need with the appropriate provider.
29% of Consumers Would Choose a Smartphone Over a Wallet When Going Out (MobileCommerceDaily)
Consumers are becoming frustrated with the limitations of cash, with 29 percent of Americans saying they would choose a smartphone over a wallet if they could only bring one item when going out, according to a new survey from PayPal. The findings suggest that American consumers are eager to move to a digital payment future but that businesses are lagging behind, with 68 percent of consumers reporting that they have been unable to pay for something because they did not have cash.
Growing Consumer Interest for In-Store Delivery of Mobile Coupons, Says Study (i2G)
Greg Sterling: A new report by comScore shows how mobile and social channels are changing online buying habits and how retailers can benefit in delivering a blend of choices for consumers including mobile coupons. The study, Pulse of the Online Shopper , notes a variety of flexible options for consumers – 46 percent said they are less likely to comparison shop when using a retailer’s mobile app and 44% want the ability to buy online and pick up their purchases in a stores.
IBM’s Smarter Approach to Contextual Cities (Forbes)
Users help each other route around trouble spots, reducing travel times for people, but also helping urban traffic run more efficiently. By providing realtime data that can help traffic managers reroute traffic around trouble spots and show the best place to find parking, restrooms, or motorist amenities.
CrowdOptic and L’Oreal to Roll Out Huge Augmented Reality Demo (VentureBeat)
Led by serial-entrepreneur Jon Fisher, the company has created a technology that is able to take the GPS, accelerometer, and compass data from multiple phones to see what people are focusing on. Instead of just recording a phone’s location, CrowdOptic is able to compare the information from different phones with one another.
Hyperlocal Voices Revisited: Ross Hawkes, Linchfield Live (OJR)
Ross Hawkes: In the earlier days of the site I used to be really impacted by the audience numbers but part of me has mellowed out now and part of me has realised that the numbers game wasn’t the reason I got into this. I place far more value on the amount of people who are submitting content or joining the discussion in the comments section of the site – it shows that they are buying into this in the same way I am.
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