Street Fight Daily: Saving Online For Offline, Tablet Owners Stay Put
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology
A Big Challenge For Retail: Turning Online “Saves” Into Offline Purchases (GigaOm)
From saving an item online to walking into a store and making a purchase, apps like Kickscout want to make it easier for shoppers to connect online and offline buying behaviors. As we’ve seen huge growth in websites and apps meant for online shopping and retail discovery, there’s still a gap that exists between the act of finding something online and actually holding the item in your hands after a purchase.
Leaf CEO: For POS Startups, It’s a ‘Race Against Time’ (Street Fight)
“Anyone selling software to SMBs would love it if distribution was through ecommerce or retail,” says Aron Schwarzkopf. “The problem with the industry however, is that SMBs have never reacted well to that. Remote distribution never worked. … But I do believe that five years from now the POS could be the gateway to the SMB. And that the way you will get to the small business may be through applications that work through the POS.”
Why Bother With Wireless? Tablet Owners Stay Tethered (AllThingsD)
Tablet owners are overwhelmingly buying tablets that have only Wi-Fi connections. Which means they can only get online when they’re within shouting distance of a router. According to a new report, only 20 percent of tablets are sold with wireless chipsets, and only half of those devices are initially connected to wireless networks.
Customization Failure: Why Hyperlocal Hasn’t Scaled (Yet) (Street Fight)
Mike Orren: Most customization that attempts to deliver hyperlocal, or even just local results, falls short. The problem is that they (and we) don’t have much more or better local content and advertising to output than we did in the days before social media and smartphones. A tool is built to operate on a national scale, but the landscape of finding the local information is messy and chaotic, lacking structured data, or consistent geographic coverage.
Unlocking The Secret To Yelp’s Global Expansion With A Stop In Istanbul (Forbes)
Alex Kantrowitz: In all 20 countries Yelp has expanded to so far, the priority has always been to build the community first, both online and offline, and then let everything else fall into place. The communities are what differentiates Yelp as it expands into new markets, an advantage earlier entrants cannot match.
Nokia Announces New Location-Based AR Features For Here Maps (Engadget)
At its Nokia Lumia 1020 launch event, Nokia’s just announced a new version of its Here Maps app that’s bringing more features to Livesight location-based augmented reality. On top of letting you pan around on the view finder and see info for shops and other landmarks as before, you’ll also be able to tap the “virtual signs” in the view and see more details and similar location categories.
Google’s New Virtual Reality Game Is Going To Bring Audiences To Ads In Real Life (Quartz)
A few months ago, Google launched Ingress, a virtual reality game that uses augmented reality to defend your city and conquer the warring faction. It’s like Foursquare, but with bombs, shields, and hacks. Their objective is clear: influence players routes — and this is the interesting part for advertisers. Usually good spots for advertising are highly trafficked or crowded places and those spots are typically very expensive to advertise in. But imagine if you can drive the crowd to where you want it to be.
ReachLocal Focuses on Verticals: A Look at its Eyefinity Deal (Local Onliner)
ReachLocal is now largely focused on providing integrated marketing solutions, including search, retargeting, promotions and process management. It is also drilling down on key verticals, such as auto and health care. The company, which works with 32,500 advertiser locations, recently announced a big deal via is ReachLocal Health Care division to sell the integrated solutions for clients of Eyefinity, which provides business services for eye doctors.
LBMA Podcast: Shopperception, Foursquare and Thumbvista’s Linden Skeens (Street Fight)
In this week’s episode, Nordstrom brings Pinterest into its stores; eMart’s flying store; What3Words tries to make physical location easier with 3 words; Shopperception goes deep into buyer behavior in physical stores; WyWy signs up Vodafone for cross-screen advertising; Foursquare and Deezer partner for concert check-ins. Plus special guest Linden Skeens of Thumbvista.
Get Street Fight Daily in your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletter.