Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial ‘Ashamed and Embarrassed,’ Foursquare Loses Product Head
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology
“Ashamed and Embarrassed” LivingSocial Says Ongoing 30-Hour Outage Should End Overnight (AllThingsD)
LivingSocial said in a blog post on Wednesday night that it is close to fixing the issue that has crippled its website, mobile apps and business-customer portal for the past 30 hours. The outage began Tuesday afternoon and then extended into Wednesday, as frustrated deal seekers and business owners took to social networks to air their grievances.
A Hyperlocal Network Grows in Brooklyn (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: After leaving Patch, Liena Zagare created a hyperlocal site in her family’s Brooklyn home neighborhood of Ditmas Park a year ago and, through her Corner News Media company, has now expanded to three neighboring communities. Street Fight spoke with Zagare recently about the keys to success for her sites, and what may be next for her fledgling hyperlocal network in New York City’s hottest borough.
Foursquare’s Head Of Product Checks Out Of Company (CNet)
Foursquare’s head of product, Alex Rainert, is checking out of the place-based social network he designed with long-time friend Dennis Crowley. His exit comes as the New York-based company, which has a modest user base of 40 million people, finds itself in the awkward position of having to make money while it still determines the best way sell itself to the masses.
RadiumOne Adds Mobile Messaging to Bring Programmatic Marketing to the Store (Street Fight)
The San Francisco-based company, which got its start by using social data to target ads, has released RadiumConnect, a mobile messaging software development kit (SDK) that allows retailers to run push notification campaigns based on the soup of information brands already collect about customers.
No Plastic, No Problem: Square Does Away With Deposit Limits For U.S. Businesses (GigaOm)
Square is eliminating holds on funds taken from payments where no physical card is present. Instead of waiting a month to get paid from a manually entered credit card transaction, merchants will get find their money deposited in their accounts in the same one-to-two business days that companies using Square Reader or Stand must wait.
Case Study: Pizza Hut Upgrades Mobile Ordering With Localized Deals (Street Fight)
Almost two decades after Pizza Hut first began accepting orders online, the company is continuing to beef up its digital presence. The latest step is a major overhaul of the Pizza Hut mobile app, upgrading the online ordering experience with location-aware features and user-recognition capabilities.
Lonely Planet Buys TouristEye Mobile App for Trip-Planning (Skift)
Lonely Planet acquired a mobile app for trip-planning, TouristEye, and Daniel Houghton, Lonely Planet COO, says “we will work closely together to marry our technology and communities how and where it makes sense.” The TouristEye Android and iOS apps enable mobile users to collect activities and destinations to create a wish list, and advertisers hit them up with special offers.
PlaceIQ Adds Location Analytics To Help Brands Understand Real-World Behavior (Street Fight)
In a push to buttress its ad targeting business, PlaceIQ has added two new analytics products, PreVisit and PIQ Analytics, that aim to provide marketers with a better understanding of their audiences by drawing insights from their consumer’s location data.The company believes that new features, coupled with its recently release attribution product, will allow marketers to better optimize their campaign based on insights drawn from real-world behaviors.
What The Convenience Store Can Teach Brands About Mobile Payment Design (PSFK)
“Merchandising on mobile is more like a convenience store or fashion boutique – you have limited space, so you need to make sure you have exactly what the customer is looking for, or something that immediately inspires them to purchase,” Michael Boeke, lead designer at Braintree Payments and head of its Venmo product, said in an interview. “The great news is that mobile devices themselves can provide unique contextual data (e.g. location) that merchants can increasingly leverage to customize the mobile shopping experience.”
Stores Sniff Out Smartphones to Follow Shoppers (MIT Technology Review)
In many big-box stores, equipment is already in place to sniff out customers’ smartphones and log data such as how many minutes a person spends in the shoe department. The technology could eventually give retailers capabilities rivaling those of online stores. Now pharmacies or home improvement stores wanting to sell Kleenex or two-by-fours could soon use records of a person’s browsing history to propose products.
Sensory Data To Support Mobile Ad Services In 2014 (MediaPost)
The advertising and marketing industries will see intelligent geolocation services play out in 2014, supported by a standard feature in smartphones that ABI Research describes as the ability to combine disparate sensory data from a variety of sources. In fact, by 2016, the research firm estimates that 1 billion smartphones will have “sensor fusion” — location-based sensory capabilities.
MapQuest Updates Its iPhone App With Improved Cartography And Routing To Take On Google And Apple Maps (TechCrunch)
On the iPhone, Apple Maps and Google Maps app have gotten all the headlines over the last several years, but MapQuest is still hanging in there, despite a lack of real innovation over the years. Today, the company is unveiling a huge update to its mobile app for iOS that provides a beautiful new alternative to the incumbents.
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