Street Fight Daily: Square Redesigns Wallet, Why Facebook Passed on Waze

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

starbucks_square-2Square Wallet Gets a Major Redesign (CNet)
Square Wallet, the mobile app that lets users pay for goods at thousands of retailers, got a major facelift Thursday. Version 3.0 of Square Wallet is essentially an aesthetic reboot of the earlier iteration of the app, which allows Square users to pay wirelessly when a retailer has implemented Square Register on an iPad.

In Rush to Local Services, Thumbtack Nabs $12.5M Series B (Street Fight)
The investment dollars keep flowing for companies in the local services space. Two months after scheduling firm Booker nabbed 27.5 million from Bain, Thumbtack, a startup that has built a reverse Craigslist for local services, has raised 12.5 million from Sequoia Capital in a series B round, bringing its total funding to a little over $18 million

In Passing on Waze, Did Facebook Make a Big Mistake or the Right Call? (AllThingsD)
Google finalized its acquisition of Waze earlier this week in a $1 billion-plus cash deal. But the outcome of the mega deal begs a question about Waze’s other most ardent suitor: Did Facebook brilliantly avoid future headaches by not overpaying for a pricey app, or did the social giant just make a huge mistake by letting an important mapping asset fall into a major competitor’s hands?

SMBs Have Some Major Advantages Over Brands in Social Marketing (Street Fight)
Joe Morsello: Social media is merely a digital extension of local conversations. We talk about the weather, the 4th of July parade, the upcoming festival, local news, et cetera. SMBs need to always be thinking about how they can join/start these conversations in order to build fans, follow leads, offer discounts, improve their reputation and, most importantly, compete with national brands.

Foursquare Tries To Find Revenue By Turning Your Data Into A Samsung Galaxy S4 Ad (TechCrunch)
Foursquare this morning has launched a pretty new visualization feature called Foursquare Time Machine, which offers a new way to view a history of your check-ins on an interactive map. And oh, it’s also an advertisement for Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone. Hey, look, Foursquare is trying to make some money by using your data!

For Hyperlocal Marketers, Data Sweeps Are Part of Doing Business (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: Marketers operate under many constraints dictated by good business and societal mores, not to mention various federal and state laws against criminal and civil misconduct. But the explosion of public data needs to be sorted out. It’s up to society, government, business and individuals everywhere to take the discussion to better and new policies and, where necessary, laws.

Lost and Found: How the SoLoMo Trend is Changing the Neighborhood (Wired)
Ted Prince: In the old days, print directories like the Yellow Pages had the stamp of credibility by virtue of a proven, trusted, sources and process. For most businesses today, the evolution of SoLoMo brings a major challenge: with online information being added, modified, commented on and removed on a regular basis, maintaining a single, consistent brand identity is difficult if not impossible.

Report: YP Fourth Largest Mobile Ad Network Globally (Screenwerk)
Data aggregator eMarketer has put together a new set of digital and mobile advertising revenue estimates. Perhaps surprising to some will be the fact that YP shows up as the number four network on the global list — meaning that according to eMarketer there are only three other companies in the world with more mobile ad revenue.

Airbnb Brings Its Hyperlocal Neighborhoods Feature to Asia (TheNextWeb)
Airbnb is furthering its presence in Asia after it introduced its Neighborhoods feature to Bangkok, which becomes the first location in the region to fall under the company’s hyper-local spotlight. The company launched Neighborhoods last November, and the feature is designed to allow travellers to get to know a city better, and more easily discover experiences and culture there.

LBMA Podcast: Chuck Martin on ‘Mobile Influence’ (Street Fight)
In this week’s episode, eBay turns windows into stores; Shopify turns e-tailers into retailers; The LBMA creates the world’s first human heatmap logo; Wikipedia goes local with content; Rogers partners with FiveStars on Vicinity; Free wifi with Scrabble; Pak ‘n Save makes the shopper the DJ; and local mobile is exploding

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