Street Fight Daily: The War For Delivery, Facebook and Small Businesses

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

same-day-deliveryIn War for Same-Day Delivery, Racing Madly to Go Last Mile (New York Times)
As the holiday shopping season gets underway, same-day delivery has become a new battleground for e-commerce. For all the sophisticated algorithms and proprietary logistics software involved, many services come down to someone like Fermin Andujar, who finds himself racing to a store, scanning the aisles for the requested items, buying them and rushing them to the customer.

Shopkick, iBeacon and the Future of In-Store Tech (Street Fight)
Steven Jacobs: Thanks to a number of new technologies — namely, Bluetooth LE and Apple’s iBeacon protocol — in-store location is entering a new phase in its maturity. There are still a number of wrinkles in the technology to iron out — first and foremost, making it work across devices — but the new generation of beacons solve many of the issues that have traditionally limited in-store tech. Here’s where we are and what to expect.

The Future of Facebook Ad Revenue: Small Businesses (Mashable)
The social network has 1 million advertisers on its platform, a number first announced in June, and double the number of advertisers from a year before, said Dan Levy, Facebook’s director of small businesses. Equally impressive is that Facebook has 25 million small businesses with active company pages, which means only 4% of companies that use Facebook to connect with customers are also using the site to advertise. That’s a lot of potential advertising revenue sitting close at hand.

ARLNow Expands to Third Community in Metro D.C. – Reston, Va. (Street Fight)
Independent hyperlocal publisher Scott Brodbeck has launched a third digital news publication in the suburbs of metro Washington, D.C. His new RestonNow serves a thriving, nationally recognized planned community that was built from scratch on farmland in Northern Virginia’s Fairfax County.

Nordstrom Will Use Pinterest To Decide What Merchandise To Display In Stores (Business Insider)
Nordstrom’s Pinterest community will now have influence over displays in every store. Nordstrom, which has nearly 4.5 million users on the social network, began testing the approach earlier this year. Popular items on Pinterest will be displayed with a red tag identifying them as popular in the women’s shoe and handbag departments of Nordstrom’s 117 stores starting today.

6 Tools SMBs Can Use to Monitor Customer Sentiment (Street Fight)
As many as 80% of SMB mobile advertisers now perform some type of online sentiment monitoring as a way to get a better understanding of what customers are really feeling about their business. Sentiment analysis, which is loosely defined as “detecting and understanding how the audience is reacting to a brand, either positively or negatively,” has an important role in the small business owner’s marketing playbook. Here are six tools that SMBs can use for this exact purpose.

The Rapid Rise And Fall Of Daily Deal Web Sites (Washington Post)
Fast forward a few years and many merchants have related their horror stories with running Groupons. The vast majority of competitors have died off; the largest one, D.C.-based LivingSocial is hanging on for dear life. Groupon stock is trading for less than half of the price you bought it for if you were “lucky” enough to be an insider and get in on the IPO price of $20. What happened? Economics happened.

Why iOS Isn’t Going To Take Over Your Car (ReadWrite)
Apple VP Eddy Cue unveiled “iOS in the Car” at the company’s developer conference last June, announcing that nine-plus automakers would support its integration of a driver’s iPhone into a car’s information systems. Even though these manufacturers have signed on, there are some real challenges ahead for integrating Apple’s new service into their vehicles.

The Emerging Software Ecosystem for Running Small Businesses (Forbes)
Cloud technology that had once been too expensive and difficult to use has become affordable, accessible, and pervasive. However, while innovation in consumer and enterprise technologies has flourished, advances in technology for small businesses has lagged behind. Until now.

Google, Zappos, Uber And Foursquare: How Consumer Data Drives Better Customer Experiences (AdExhanger)
Google, Zappos Labs, Foursquare and taxi-hailing app Uber talked about the trade-off of consumer data in exchange for better customer experiences during PSFK’s Future of Retail forum Thursday along the San Francisco marina. By harnessing huge volumes of data, Uber is able to aggregate demand patterns and subsequent development strategy around findings like the nuances of pick-ups in financial districts in New York and San Francisco.

These INteractive British Airways Billboards “Point” To Planes Flying Over In Real Time (Fast Company)
The campaign includes digital billboards in London’s Piccadilly Circus and Chiswick that seem to show a boy get up and point to a real plane flying over. Programmed to know exactly when a BA plane flies by, the billboard then display the flight number, destination, and eventually, even the lowest fares currently available to that locale.

Uber Strikes Deal To Lower The Cost Of Car Ownership For Drivers (TechCrunch)
On-demand transportation service Uber is trying to get new drivers on the road, while also improving the experience for those who are already on its platform. To do that, it’s partnered with a couple of auto manufacturers and a few financing providers to reduce the cost of new car ownership for Uber drivers in six of its fastest-growing markets.

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