Street Fight Daily: Inside Patch’s Revenues, Yelp Adds Mobile Reviews
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology
Inside Patch’s Leaked Revenue Numbers And Its Hunt For Profitability (TechCrunch)
Patch, AOL’s hyperlocal news project, is undergoing steep layoffs as it aims for profitability by the end of the year. Leaked memos detail Patch’s revenue both in its lower reaches, and what its sales bosses expect it to accumulate daily. This grants us a window into Patch’s health, and why the project is cutting as deeply as it is.
Yelp Adds Mobile Reviews (Mashable)
Yelp has launched a few new features aimed at making its services easier to use for both visitors and reviewers. There is a new Yelp mobile app, available on iOS, with Android compatibility to follow, which allows users to post Yelp reviews straight from their mobile phone.
Groupon Suspends Sales Rep While It Investigates Thinly Veiled Yelp Review Threat (AllThingsD)
A Groupon spokesperson said on Sunday that the company was investigating whether one of its sales reps made a thinly-veiled threat to a restaurant owner to have his friends post bad reviews on Yelp and social media. In the interim, Groupon has suspended the rep, Andrew Johnston, from interacting with other merchants.
The Newsonomics of Patch’s Unquilting (Nieman Lab)
Ken Doctor: Armstrong’s humbling may give us a picture into tech-led media change itself at the moment, but our immediate question is: What does Patch tell us about the future of local news, about continued reliance on advertising, and about the value of technology?
TheBrooklynGame.com: A Niche Within A HyperLocal Niche (Forbes)
TheBrooklynGame.com covers just one topic via a single team in one locale — Brooklyn’s beloved Nets – and is quietly trying to make a go of it. Founder Steven Waldman said the site received about 1 million site visits during the “season” – November, 2012 to June 1, 2013. He also added that the site is part of a larger effort of his to build out digital media in Brooklyn.
Expecting the Unexpected From Jeff Bezos (New York Times)
There is a reason that not even the most imaginative press critics ever thought that Jeff Bezos might one day buy The Washington Post: he has never seemed much of a fan of journalism or journalists. He gives interviews only when he has something to promote, and always stays on message.
Meet the Man Who Is Building a Hyperlocal Aggregation Platform for the Chicago Sun-Times (GigaOm)
Tim Landon, a newspaper veteran and co-founder of an early online-advertising company called Classified Ventures, thinks he can make the economics of local content work with a hyperlocal aggregation platform he is building called Aggrego — a startup financed by the owner of the Chicago Sun-Times. Landon said he has been thinking for some time about applying the lessons he learned in building Classified Ventures to the editorial side of the newspaper business.