Street Fight Daily: Moovit Raises $28M, Local’s Next IPO
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.
Moovit Raises A $28M Sequoia-led Funding Round For Its Public Transit Service (PandoDaily)
Moovit is announcing that it has raised a $28 million Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital. The round, which brings the public transit app maker’s total fundraising to $31.5 million, will be used to expand and support the company’s nascent service. It had just 600,000 users in March — now it has over 3 million.
Why Small Local Sites *Must* Have Mutiple Revenue Streams (Street Fight)
“If there is a ‘model’ for community news, it’s finding the right mix of diverse revenue streams that are best suited to the particular conditions of a news organization’s local market and journalistic mission,” says Jake Batsell of NewsBiz. “But that diversity of revenue is critical, because news outlets depending on a single stream of income are leaving themselves vulnerable.”
Local Heroes: The Public Companies of Tomorrow (AllThingsD)
Jeff Jordan: There is a growing pipeline of late-stage private companies that will become the public companies of tomorrow, including Uber, GrubHub, Seamless, MindBody and ZocDoc. I would argue that the The winner-take-all characteristics of local businesses create what investors crave in companies: Strong competitive moats.”
Case Study: Caribou Coffee Amps Up Holiday Sales With Mobile Gift Cards (Street Fight)
In an effort to enhance Caribou Coffee’s mobile marketing capabilities, , vice president of marketing Michele Vig launched an eGift card initiative in early November. Now, customers who purchase eGift cards online can send their gifts to friends via email. Recipients can then redeem their gifts by showing their smartphones to a cashier or printing the gift card at home and handing over a paper printout.
Hey Uber, Lyft Is Growing Faster Than You (TechCrunch)
Lyft, which started peer-to-peer ride-sharing after Uber’s black cars on demand, is seeing its revenues grow at a rate of about 6 percent every single week. That growth rate is more than double Uber’s growth pace, which averaged about 2.8 percent in the five weeks of data leaked to Gawker. Compounded over a year, Lyft is seeing 20X growth.
Allstate Lets You Virtually Decorate Any Location — Just Watch Out for Mayhem (AdAge)
Insurance provider Allstate, which has launched the “holiday decorator,” a deceptively sweet site created by Leo Burnett Chicago that invites you to pick any address and adorn it with seasonal knick-knacks such as lights, ornaments and candles. Location-based websites are a hot thing in the insurance category with State Farm’s recent has “Chaos in Your Town” campaign.
Getting Reviews the ‘Hardest’ Part of Local Online Marketing (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: According to data compiled by BrightLocal’s Myles Anderson, local digital marketing is getting “harder.” The charts and data below are based on surveys of local SEOs and those doing digital marketing on behalf of SMBs. The major challenge expressed is that of getting reviews and doing reputation management.
Real-Time With Vistar’s Jeremy Ozen On Why Place-Based Is Ready For Programmatic (MediaPost)
While programmatic trading does exist for place-based media, I don’t think it will command a significant portion of budget until programmatic improves in channels like display and mobile. But Jeremy Ozen, co-founder of Vistar Media, a location-based video ad platform for programmatic traders, doesn’t believe that has to happen first.
IBM’s ‘Wide-Eyed’ Local Shopping Predictions (Screenwerk)
Among scores of others IBM has released its now annual “5 in 5” set of predictions about how technology will change our lives in five years. Here’s what IBM says will be true of local retail in five years.
Get Street Fight Daily in your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletter.