Street Fight Daily: Uber’s Street Fight, The Decline of Alt- Weeklies
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.
Uber, Taxis Engage in French Street Fight (Wall Street Journal)
Online car-service companies including Uber Technologies Inc. plan to challenge a new French regulation that slows how quickly they can pick up passengers, escalating a battle over apps that are upending the traditional taxi business. California-based Uber and French competitors including Chauffeur-Prive.com and Allocab.com said Monday that they are planning an appeal to France’s Conseil d’Etat, the country’s highest.
Hyperlocal Execs’ 2014 Predictions (Part Two): Locu, Radius, Placed (Street Fight)
As we have for the past couple of years, Street Fight recently asked a number of hyperlocal luminaries to weigh in with their predictions for where local is headed in 2014. We ran the first installment of their responses yesterday — here are a bunch more.
How the Village Voice and Other Alt-Weeklies Lost Their Voice in 2013 (Al Jazeera America)
The Boston Phoenix, among the oldest and most storied, collapsed in March, putting about 50 employees out of work, just six months after an optimistic move to glossy stock; the paper was losing roughly $1 million a year. Some of the causes of the alt-press meltdown are more complex than those of daily newspapers, which have been felled primarily by the Internet and corporate overreach. But the results are at least as tumultuous.
Street Fight’s 10 Most Popular Stories From 2013 (Street Fight)
On this last day of 2013, here’s a look back at some of the Street Fight stories that really piqued your interest this year (at least as far as page views go). We’re grateful for all of your support this past year, and we look forward to bringing you more great content, research, and events about sustainable hyperlocal business models in 2014.
Foursquare Quietly Unlocks Its Own “Local Data Aggregator” Badge (Moz Blog)
David Mihm: Foursquare has been turning away from an acquisition path, setting off on a fundraising spree in 2013. It’s one of the few companies in tech to successfully address both sides of the merchant and consumer marketplace, and as a result, might even have a chance at an IPO.
Street Fight Hosted Three Events in 2013 — Here’s What to Remember (Street Fight)
The programming for the events, and the stories flowing out of them, reflect the continued transformation of the local marketing industry and the emergence of a new, technology-driven local ecosystem. With the year coming to a close, here is a look back at the biggest stories that came out of Street Fight’s Annual Summits
The Best and Worst Thing to Ever Happen to SEO (Wired)
Ryan Connor: The recent changes and historical stance by Google’s team embody their efforts in trying to shift the focus away from the Wild West that is search engine optimization and back to the consumers and consumable content. While SEO is clearly still relevant, many efforts are for naught because businesses are caught up with rankings and pursue less-than-ethical tactics trying to achieve them.
Closely Updates Mobile App for Social Monitoring
(ZDNet)
Closely, a social marketing technolgy company created and run by the founder of MapQuest and Jabber, has released version 2.0 of its Perch mobile application — which lets your organization keep tabs on what the social sphere is saying about your brand, product or services. The biggest change is that the application isn’t just focused on activity related to your own company: it can help your team watch how your competition is faring, which might help them adjust or refine their own messaging and activities.
Looking back at mobile payments in 2013 (Mobile Payments Today)
As the calendar speeds toward 2014, Mobile Payments Today is taking a moment to look back at the year that was. To get a feel for the year, we asked a handful of industry insiders to weigh in on one simple question: What was the biggest mobile payments news story or trend in 2013?
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