Street Fight Daily: Comcast Resurrects Everyblock, iOS in the Car
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.
Hyperlocal Website EveryBlock to be Resurrected (Chicago Tribune)
EveryBlock, the hyperlocal website shut down last February amid financial losses, is returning from internet limbo. Comcast, which had seemingly pulled the plug on the neighborhood news site for good, is relaunching it Thursday in Chicago, hoping to reconnect with its users and revive its fortunes in the challenging hyperlocal space.
Let’s Simplify and Strengthen Business Listing Verification (Street Fight)
Damian Rollison: Verification is a great idea in theory and, once you navigate the tangled process, it even works well for most business owners in practice. However, there is very little consistency across publishers as to how the process should work or what the result should be, and there is plenty of evidence that the supposed lockdown of business data via owner verification doesn’t always operate as it should.
Developer activates Apple’s upcoming iOS in the Car system, shows different interface (9to5Mac)
Ahead of Apple’s launch of iOS in the Car later this year, developer Steven Troughton-Smith has seemingly activated the feature inside what we presume is the iOS Simulator. iOS in the Car allows an iOS 7 user to connect their iOS device to their car’s built-in center console display.
Case Study: Pizza Chain Uses Customer Data For Targeted Offers (Street Fight)
At Patxi’s Pizza, a pizza chain with 12 locations in California and Colorado, marketing manager Jordana Heinke uses the purchasing data she gathers through her company’s mobile loyalty program to send highly-targeted offers to her most frequent customers. “We can immediately see changes happening with volume of interest and redemption if we change a reward,” Heinke says.
After Rebranding, YP Names Allison Checchi CMO (AdAge)
Four months after running its first brand campaign promoting the shorter, simpler name it took on after discarding yellowpages.com, YP has promoted Allison Checchi to chief marketing officer. Ms. Checchi, previously the company’s SVP value and yield management and business development, will be tasked with increasing awareness of the new YP brand, and helping advertisers take advantage of its tools to build their own.
Uber Steps on the Gas in Asia Expansion (Bloomberg)
While the company has gained momentum in Europe and blanketed many of the largest U.S. cities with black cars, taxis and hybrids, the app is relatively unknown in Asia. Today, it’s in a dozen Asian cities. Last week, Uber kicked off service in Hyderabad, an Indian city with about 7 million people, and the week before that, it began to operate in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
PayPal President David Marcus on the Challenges of Scaling a Payments Company (TheNextWeb)
There’s no question that PayPal has seen some significant progress since its founding 16 years ago. PayPal president David Marcus shared some insights into the payment processing company’s future and some thoughts about how he has taken certain actions to restructure the organization, seeking to fend off competitors and make full use of the growing ecosystem
Will Retailers Make the Right Choice on Mobile Tracking? (AdAge)
Stores are faced with a choice: They can keep quiet about these new technologies while implementing minimal privacy protections, or they can be up-front and conspicuous about how mobile data is being used and proactively define its tangible benefits to consumers. The former risks alienating consumers, while the latter gives retailers the opportunity to build their brand, trust, and deepen relationships with customers.
Bridging Digital & Physical – The Potential of Leveraging Beacons (ClickZ)
As expected, there are competing technologies and ways of thinking of beacon technology. Some leverage GPS, some Wi-Fi and some both, combined with GPS. Some are talking about one beacon per physical location (based on entry through the front doors) while others are focusing on multiple beacons, to really understand movement through physical locations.
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