Street Fight Daily: Highlight Rebounds, Uber Talks Deliveries

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.

highlightHighlight Raises $4 Million From DFJ, Releases Version 2.0 Of Its Location-Based Social Networking App (TechCrunch)
Location-based social startup Highlight has just released a new version of its app, aimed at being smarter about the connections it shows, while also giving users more context about what those connections have been up to. The company also has raised $4 million in new funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

How Can Low-Revenue Indie News Sites Boost Their Game? (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: “The ability sell digital ad space efficiently is, in general, becoming an absolute necessity to compete for advertiser dollars,” says Kenny Katzgrau, a co-founder of Broadstreet Ads. “Local ad inventory cannot be an exception. More importantly, the ad inventory of beloved community news sites has a special value that isn’t being optimally exposed to buyers, big or small.”

Uber: From Taxis To Deliveries On Demand (CNN Money)
The fast-growing company is considering a big push into local deliveries, after experimenting in U.S. cities over the past year with a service that brings ice cream, kittens, Christmas trees and bouquets of roses to customers with very little notice. “We’re in the business of delivering cars in five minutes. And once you can deliver cars in five minutes, there’s a lot of things you can deliver in five minutes,” Uber founder Travis Kalanick told CNNMoney at the LeWeb technology conference in Paris.

6 Ways National Brands Can Improve Their Local Campaigns (Street Fight)
The hyperlocal technology that brands need to reach consumers locally is available and ready, so why aren’t more brands taking advantage of the opportunity? Only 7% of national marketers say they have effective local campaigns in place, according to a 2013 study by Balihoo. Here are six strategies for helping brands make the most of their local campaigns.

Google Maps iOS App Updated To Show Flight, Hotel And Restaurant Reservations (GigaOm)
Although most iOS users have chosen to stick with Apple’s preinstalled Maps app, Google Maps for iOS is getting better all the time. The latest update brings some Google Now functionality into the mix, now letting you sign into your Google account to automatically pull up and display any reservation info it can find for flights, hotels and restaurants.

Mobile/Location-Based Marketing Predictions For 2014 From 10 Experts (MarketingLand)
Aaron Strout: As we close in on the end of the year, it is helpful for us marketers to think ahead to what the coming year will offer. While I plan to do another “trends” post in early January (see what I had to say for 2013), in this post, I’ve asked several of my mobile-savvy colleagues to weigh in on what 2014 has in store when it comes to mobile and location-based marketing.

All Good News For Media Mogul Ryan (Rober Feder)
From the bitter disappointment of his aborted bid for public office in 2004, Jack Ryan turned his media ordeal into a business opportunity. The following year he founded a hyperlocal publishing company on the premise that there’s more “positive news” out there than people were getting from traditional sources.

Foursquare Exec On Why Location Is The New Cookie (PSFK)
Senior Brand Partner, Brian Williamson, spoke at PSFK’s launch event for our Future of Retail Report in San Francisco about the forward trajectory of Foursquare and the strides it is making to offer location-specific retail offers to its users. Reaching people at the right place and right time are obviously key, Williamson said, but Foursquare empowers retailers to add another another element into the marketing mix.

IFTTT Launches iOS Location Channel With Integrations For Foursquare, Twitter, Instagram And Facebook (TechCrunch)
IFTTT has announced the addition of an iOS Location channel to its ‘Internet glue’ service. The channel will allow users to specify an ‘area’ that will allow them to trigger actions and recipes based on when they enter or leave that area.

LBMA Podcast: PlaceIQ Partners With Mazda, Amazon’s Drone Delivery (Street Fight)
On the show: Singtel soft-launches their shopping app Lyke; PayPal partners with OrderBird in Germany; Texas Instruments patents indoor location; Apple buys Topsy; Tantrum Street launches Cartwheel register. Special guest is Marc Castrechini, VP Software Development of Merchant Warehouse

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