Discovering Common Ground Among ‘Indie’ and Corporate Hyperlocal Sites

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The digital Grand Canyon that has divided independent and corporate hyperlocal news sites is not looking so immense lately. The “indies” and the corporates are still kicking up a lot of dust in their community-by-community competition. But these rivals are changing their operations and strategies in ways that make them look more alike than different…

LBMA Podcast: Banjo’s Raise, Wearable Experiments, One Llama

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Top stories of the week include Mahana, Locoslab, Yelp & Yahoo!, Emotient, UTEC, Apple, HP & Aurasma. The Mobile Minute with Chuck Martin recaps some highlights from SXSW and the resource of the week demystifies the second screen in North America…

Street Fight Daily: Yelp Partners With YP, Airbnb’s $10B Valuation

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyYelp, YP Partner in Local Advertising Deal (SearchEngineLand)… New Capital Could Raise Airbnb Value To $10 Billion (New York Times)… The Newsonomics of Selling Cars.com (Nieman Journalism Lab)…

Finding the Right Point of Contact At: A Franchise Organization

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Crafting the perfect pitch is only part of the challenge. For hyperlocal vendors trying to generate traction in a crowded marketplace, being able to locate the best point of contact at each of the individual companies being pitched is an incredibly important part of the sales process. Here are four strategies for finding the right person to pitch at a franchise organization, from hyperlocal executives who’ve had success…

What Real-Time Computing Means for Local Commerce

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Earlier this month, SAP, the german business software giant, announced that it plans to put a version of its real-time analytics software Hana online. The computing platform is one of a number of new analytics products that use so-called in-memory processing — a reference to a computer’s temporary, or working memory — to rapidly analyze vast amounts of data in an instant, allowing businesses to draw insights and make decisions in a matter of milliseconds…

Street Fight Daily: Mobile Search Explodes, Facebook Ends the Free Ride

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyIn 2013 Mobile Search Exploded but the Dollars Haven’t Followed Suit (Yet) (Pando)… Facebook Is Ending the Free Ride (ValleyWag)… Foursquare CEO: Google and Yelp are ‘Incredibly Broken’ (VentureBeat)…

Case Study: Ace Hardware Uses Mobile Tools to Drive Shoppers In-Store

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National hardware chain Ace Hardware recently debuted a new mobile iPhone application, meant to enhance the shopping experience and encourage customers to complete their transaction at local Ace Hardware locations…

Is Facebook Paper the Wake-up Call Publishers Need?

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Media companies and publishers need to take a page from Facebook and other fast-moving digital properties. These digital entities are giving readers what they want while using what they know about users to “make a killing” with ads. Publishers who were virtually sidelined by these digital powerhouse companies can now get back in the game by adopting a Zuckerberg move: creating the right conditions and culture…

Street Fight Daily: Clinkle Revealed, Ride-Sharing War Intensifies

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyClinkle Revealed: Here’s What the Embattled Startup Is (And Isn’t) Building (Recode)… Ride-Sharing Price War Intensifies With Lyft’s ‘Happy Hour’ Discount (Wall Street Journal)… LivingSocial to Prioritize Growth Over Profitability, New Chief Revenue Officer Says (Washington Post)…

A ‘Connected’ Closet? As if — or Maybe Not

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DigitasLBi Labs, the agency’s tech incubator in Paris, has built an in-store shopping assistant that uses image recognition software and Bluetooth low-energy beacons to match, recommend, and display possible additions to a shopper’s wardrobe. The group developed the “inspiration corridor” in conjunction with Klépierre, a french real estate company that operates malls across the country, and has installed the prototype in a Parisian shopping center…

7 Strategies for Leveraging In-Store Beacons

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Indoor beacons are bridging the gap between physical locations and digital experiences, and allowing developers and businesses to interact with consumers based on their proximity to specific locations. But as with any new technology, indoor beacons do have their limitations and marketers need to be strategic in order to get the best use out of them…

Street Fight Daily: Airbnb’s Grand Plans, Foursquare’s Recommended Future

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyInside Airbnb’s Grand Hotel Plans (Fast Comapny)… Foursquare CEO: How We’ll Tell You Where To Eat And What To Order (ReadWrite)… Matt Cutts: Google Mobile Queries May Surpass PC Search This Year (SearchEngineLand)…

How Data is Transforming the Local Purchase Funnel

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For years, the local marketplace largely missed out on a data revolution that has transformed commerce on the web. But the rapid adoption of the smartphone is quickly bringing the local shopping experience to parity with ecommerce, transforming the consumer journey and dramatically improving the targeting capabilities available to marketers today…

Why Booker Wants to Blur the Line Between Marketing and Operations

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Last year, Bain Capital poured $27 million into Booker, a company that builds scheduling and business management software for small and medium-sized salons. Today, the New York-based startup is working to push deeper into the front office, building a new suite of tools that use a business’s operational data — booking data, payment information and the like — to engage with existing customers, and in some cases, find new ones…

Phone Leads for Local Businesses: The Unsexy Cousin of the Click (Part II)

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Beyond bringing in big leads — and SMBs paying handsomely for them — call monetization will be compelled by something else: Opportunity cost. We forecast call volume to SMBs to explode (65 billion by 2016) as a result of increasing mobile usage trends. That’s going to mean a whole lot of calls to answer…

Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Preps IPO, JustEat Eyes London Markets

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyGoDaddy Prepares for IPO (Wall Street Journal)… Just Eat Preps IPO In London, Aiming To Raise £100M (TechCrunch)… CMO One-to-One: LivingSocial Evolves from Deals Site to Deals Marketplace (eMarketer)…

Openings and New Hires at PayPal, Leaf, SIM Partners and Angie’s List

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Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, jobs at hibu, Mediative, Facebook, LiveIntent and more…

LBMA Podcast: OfficeDepot, Apple’s CarPlay, ‘Apponomics’

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Top stories of the week include Revealr, Lechal, Six to Start, Thirdshelf, ShipEarly, Apple’s CarPlay, PizzaHut and Chaotic Moon, and Volvo’s delivery system. Our Mobile Minute with Chuck Martin examines the in-store difference between the mobile web and mobile apps…

Street Fight Daily: Eventbrite Hits $1 Billion, Clinkle’s Clunking Continues

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyEventbrite Tops Billion-Dollar Valuation With New Funding  (Wall Street Journal)… Clinkle’s Still a Hot Mess as Its Big Shot COO Departs (Recode)… Israel’s Wix.com Buys Mobile Commerce Firm Appixia (Reuters)…

In ‘Smart Cities,’ A Sea Change for the Web

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Over the past decade, a new vision of the future has emerged, in which mobility, and ubiquitous connectivity is actually drawing us back into the physical world. To accommodate the world’s rapid urbanization, a growing sector of tech companies are working to create new ways to make our cities smarter. Anthony Townsend, a senior research scientist at New York University, spoke to Street Fight recently about about the Smart City movement and the changing relationship the physical and digital worlds…