Street Fight Daily: Groupon Buys Fashion Site, Delivery Hero Nabs $88M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.
Groupon Buys Flash Sales Fashion Site Ideeli (USA Today)
Groupon said Monday that it acquired online flash sales fashion retailer Ideeli for $43 million to expand in the apparel sector. Ideeli started in 2007 and was part of a group of so-called flash sales companies that specialized in fast, daily online events that offered heavily discounted fashion apparel in limited supply.
The Real World Is on the Verge of Its Own Data Revolution (Street Fight)
Steven Jacobs: A world of connected devices — from smartphones and tablets to wi-fi routers and bluetooth beacons — are measuring the comings and goings of buyers and sellers locally, creating a new dataset that businesses, consumers and technology companies can use to create a better, more efficient local marketplace.
Berlin’s Delivery Hero Gobbles Up $88M in Series E Funding (GigaOm)
In the first big European funding news of the year, Berlin-based food-ordering service Delivery Hero said on Monday that it has raised $88 million. The Insight Venture Partners-led Series E round brings Delivery Hero‘s overall funding to almost $200 million, and should help it in its ongoing battle with London-based rival Just Eat, which has more than 40,000 restaurants signed up across 13 countries.
5 Strategies For Launching a Location-Targeted Mobile Campaign (Street Fight)
Mobile ads show a 42% lift in performance when they’re targeted based on the location of a business, but there’s still debate as to how tightly marketers should target their ads to optimize the performance of their campaigns. Here are five questions to ask yourself when deciding how targeted to make your mobile campaign.
Lowe’s Backs Recommendation Site for Home Projects (New York Times)
Lowe’s is partnering with a start-up in Seattle, Porch.com, that has come up with a novel method for recommending home improvement professionals, one that the start-up’s executives say is resistant to the kind of manipulation that occurs on other review sites. Lowe’s employees in 139 stores in North Carolina, South Carolina and the Seattle area have begun using Porch to find contractors, handymen and other professionals for shoppers.
Paris Cabbies Slash Tires, Smash Windshields in Protest Against Uber (BusinessWeek)
The rivalry between Paris cabbies and Uber turned violent today, as striking taxi drivers began attacking cars booked through Uber and another private-hire service. The violence erupted during a strike by cabdrivers who are protesting increased competition from private car services.
Putting Square’s $5B Valuation Into Context (TechCrunch)
Square’s growth has been a story of sustained momentum. Rising from a payment-processing run rate of $1 billion in the middle of 2011, Square is now expected to process some $30 billion this calendar year. Investors are now valuing Square more on the strength of its current and perhaps forward 12-month processing volume (to which its revenue is directly tied), and less — again, perhaps — against its three-year growth potential.
PayPal Wants To Be Everywhere, But That Could Be Its Downfall (ReadWrite)
PayPal announced that it is making progress with both its Payment Code and PayPal Beacon products that will enable retailers to make payments from their smartphones at physical retailers around the country. PayPal is a company that calmly and pragmatically works its way through the horizontal landscape of the payments world with a self-assured arrogance that it will be the de facto way that people for things now and in the future.
How Local Businesses Can Leverage Twitter’s New Nearby Feature (SearchEngineLand)
Twitter has made headlines in recent weeks with the quiet launch of its experimental Nearby timeline, which allows eligible mobile users to discover tweets posted by others in their immediate vicinity, regardless of whether they are following them. There are five simple steps that local businesses can pursue now to take advantage of this experimental tool and best position their Twitter efforts if and when the feature becomes permanent.
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