Street Fight Daily: Google Wallet Comes To iOS, Groupon’s Monster Rally
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology
Google Wallet Finally Comes to the iPhone (With a Big Asterisk) (AllThingsD)
Google Wallet for Apple’s iPhone is finally here, Google announced today, and it has a lot in common with the new Android version that launched earlier this week. But the one capability that Google Wallet got a lot of attention for early on isn’t making its way to the iPhone app: Making a payment in-store with a tap of the phone. Those payments happen through Near Field Communication technology, which Apple has long resisted adding to its iPhone.
What Scale Means After Patch and Groupon (Street Fight)
Steven Jacobs: Macroeconomic developments and internal politics aside, both Tim Armstrong and Andrew Mason succumbed to the flawed assumption, held by many at the time, that local was a land grab. They mistook opportunity with urgency, falsely believing that the local market was some homogenous block, which would open its coffers to the first company that invested enough money, or put enough feet on the street, to make it work.
Three Reasons Groupon’s Monster Rally Will Continue (Wall Street Journal)
“The key is the company’s focus on reducing dependence on email, focusing on mobile and app-based commerce and streamlining operations, which had been incredibly inefficient under the past CEO,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan said in a note to clients, referring to former chief executive Andrew Mason. “In our view, while the company has not yet shown a big acceleration in total growth rate, the acceleration of growth is likely soon, perhaps this quarter.
5 Tools Retailers Can Use to Create Indoor Maps (Street Fight)
Mobile navigation apps can easily direct consumers to a business’ front door, but once shoppers step foot inside — where the real action takes place — they’re usually on their own. Now, a handful of indoor mapping vendors are using hyperlocal technology to help retailers, malls and other large venues take the next step in guiding customers through the purchase funnel, with tools for developing interior maps that can be used to direct shoppers toward specific aisles or locations within an establishment.
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman Ignored Advice From Elon Musk and Peter Thiel And Succeeded Anyway (CNNMoney)
When Jeremy Stoppelman was applying to Harvard Business School in 2003, he asked his boss at PayPal, Elon Musk, to write him a letter of recommendation. Since then Yelp has grown into a multi-national publicly traded company with 1,700 employees and a market cap of $4 billion. Twice Stoppelman has rejected offers to buy Yelp, first for a reported $500 million, from Google, then for $1 billion from Yahoo.
Study: Google Reviews Determine Local Carousel Rankings (SearchEngineLand)
Greg Sterling: Since the launch of the Google “Local Carousel” in June, SEOs and marketers have been trying to reverse engineer the ranking variables that elevate listings into that hallowed ground. Mike Blumenthal offered a good early roundup of stories and analysis. Now Digital Marketing Works (DMW) has conducted an extensive study of what might be called “Carousel results” and come to the conclusion that the quality and quantity of Google reviews are the single most important variable determining inclusion and ranking.
Not All Ideas Make Billion-dollar Companies. Here’s How SmallKnot Handled That Reality (PandoDaily)
A company can be small and authentic and still be powerful, SmallKnot’s founder Jay Lee argued. In fact, he said he hopes Smallknot can join a new breed of Brooklyn-based startups that are not necessarily massive, scalable tech platforms, but still deliver innovative, valuable products.
Deliv Raises $6.85 Million To Bring Same-Day Delivery To A Store Near You (TechCrunch)
Investors have recently piled millions into same-day delivery startups such as New York’s Zipments and San Francisco’s PostMates, and now Palo Alto firm Deliv has become the latest beneficiary, with plans to use a $6.85 million series A investment to hire new staff and roll out services to hundreds of retailers located in shopping malls across America. Deliv’s technology integrates directly into the retailer’s e-commerce properties allowing customers to select the same-day delivery option at the time of checkout.
LBMA Podcast: Placecast’s New Mobile Ad Platform, Bing Partners With Local Corp (Street Fight)
On the show: Audi brings public desire and reward to the Mini in London, Estimote powered by iBeacon is just the start of the mote world, Coca-Cola’s Positivity Wall, and PayPal takes their hands-free payments to the masses. Plus Chuck Martin’s Mobile Minute gives us the Cool vs. Creepy scale for location based marketing.