Five Trends That Will Shape the Future of Local Commerce

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Two decades after the first ecommerce site, the commerce landscape has begun to shift again. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a resurgence in innovation around mobile as technology companies develop new ways to bridge the gap between ecommerce and offline spending. Here are five trends, which will shape the future of commerce over the next decade…

Relevant Content or Privacy? Choose Both

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The challenge many publishers face is how to increase ad inventory value through personalized ads without exposing sensitive, personally identifiable data and violating user privacy. There are 3 main ways that publishers can extend their access to sharable, ad-request-friendly user data, but only one of them provides both consumer privacy and the ability to increase ad inventory value…

Case Study: Toy Store Upgrades Customer Experience With mPOS System

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Managing the operations, staffing, and financials at his growing after-market Lego business has left John Masek with little time to spend dealing with the technological infrastructure necessary to run a traditional hardware point-of-sale system. Mobile POS systems with integrated rewards programs can give mom-and-pop businesses an edge against large retail chains…

Street Fight Daily: Square Orders Ahead, Airbnb Faces SF Ban

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Square’s New Way to Make Cash: An Order-Ahead Option (Recode)… Airbnb Faces Near-Ban In San Francisco (Huffington Post)… Airbnb Faces Near-Ban In San Francisco (Huffington Post)…

At Microsoft, a Renewed Push for Small Business

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Over the past year, Microsoft has managed to grow Bing’s market share — albeit, marginally — while investing in expanding its advertising presence among small business. Part of the effort is to use its search business as a springboard to bring advertising to a host of other platforms, many of which have never before been a home to ads…

6 Tools to Add Menus to Mobile Apps

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Online menus drive more traffic to restaurants than coupons and giveaways combined, with 33% of consumers in a 2014 JiWire survey saying they’re more influenced by seeing menu information in a mobile ad than special offers or the location of an establishment. Here are six tools that restaurants can use to add integrated, mobile-friendly menus to their websites and apps…

Street Fight Daily: Nokia’s New Chief, New York’s ‘Smart’ Bar Crawl

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Nokia Announces New Strategy and Chief Executive (New York Times)… New York City Bars to Use Apple’s iBeacons for App-Driven ‘Pub Crawl’ Promotion (AppleInsider)… The Decline of Newspapers Hits a Stunning Milestone (Slate)…

After AOL’s Hyperlocal Fail, Media Watchers Pin Hopes on Smaller Operations

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With a number of once-promising large-scale hyperlocal media projects laying in ruin, local media’s star has faded a bit over the past year, causing many industry watchers to frame local journalism as a pursuit defined by a social need, and burdened by an unfriendly market reality. The vision of the $150 billion market opportunity has been replaced with a social ethic — the need for small, independent operations to create self-sufficient clusters in their communities…

Report: Local Media Ad Revs Will Climb to $158.6B By 2018

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Local media ad revenues are set to increase 19% by 2018, according to new figures released by BIA/Kelsey, climbing from $133.2 billion in 2013 to $158.6 billion in 2018. The compound annual growth rate of 3.6% represents faster growth than previously expected, strengthened by political and Olympic advertising. Meanwhile, local digital media is set to continue its increase in market share, increasing from $31.7 billion (23 percent) in 2014 to $52.7 billion (33.2 percent) in 2018…

Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Slips Further, Consumers Balk on Mobile Wallets

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… LivingSocial Sales Slip Further (Wall Street Journal)… Few Consumers Are Buying Premise of Mobile Wallets (New York Times)… Airbnb Wants to Be a Travel Agent (Wall Street Journal)…

Newspaper Companies Make Another Big Investment in a Circular Startup

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Gannett, Hearst, Belo, and others have invested another $15 million in Wanderful Media, a service that digitizes and distributes the millions of merchandizing ads that go out every weekend in local papers across the United States. The deal, which brings the startup’s total funding to over $50 million, highlights the newspaper industry’s struggle to find an answer to a depreciating revenues after technology companies have picked off many of its valuable assets…

Openings and New Hires at Thinknear, Twitter and Verizon

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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, new hires and jobs at Factual, Angie’s List, Local Yokel Media, Facebook, Mediative and hibu.

LBMA Podcast: Twitter’s Gnip Buy, Facebook’s Nearby Friends

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Top stories of the week include Coca-Cola, Jasper, GNIP, Twitter, Gowalla, Last.co, Goodnight Lad, TigerAir, UNMAS, Takara Tomy Arts, Facebook, WunWun, Gett and Beacon Crawl…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Buys Moves, Lyft Puts Capital to Work

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… By Buying Moves, Facebook Acquires High-Value Passive Location Technology (GigaOm)… Lyft Puts New Megabucks to Work: Launches in 24 Cities, Cuts Prices Again, Drops All Fees (Recode)… Berg Insight: Mobile Location-Based Advertising will be worth $14.8B in 2018 (FierceWireless)…

Brady on Thunderdome: The Glue at the Core Was Never Able to Dry

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“The local digital news solution is probably going to come from new players rather than legacy ones,” says outgoing Digital First Media editor-in-chief Jim Brady. “It’s extremely hard to try and create that next-generation local news product while you’re dealing with the rapid decline of your core business. … Somewhere in that broad swath of experimentation are all the pieces for a successful model. It’s just a matter of time until someone finds the right mix.”

Connectivity Raises $6 Million to Make Marketing Automation Work for Small Businesses

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The Los Angeles-based startup has raised $6.35 million in funding to help small businesses structure and draw insights from digital interactions. The company is developing software to identify and analyze references to brick-and-mortar businesses in social media, reviews and other user-generated content, and then aggregate that data into a dashboard for small businesses to monitor their presence online…

Sightly Launches Localized Video Ad Product

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The San-Diego-based company launched TargetView, a new product that will allow local branches of national advertising agencies, small agencies, and SMB marketing teams to develop and deliver localized content on YouTube, Google Display, and social media. Using IP and GPS information, individual ads and campaigns will be able to cater to potential customers in specific locations…

Shopkeep Raises $25M to Build a Better Cash Register for Indie Retail

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The New York-based startup that builds point-of-sale software for mobile devices has raised $25 million in its third round of funding. The new capital thrusts the company to the forefront of a busy pack of upstarts looking to rethink the point-of-sale. It also sets the stage for a drawn-out fight between a handful of well-funded startups, the legacy point-of-sale providers who control much of the market, and a number of other tech giants looking in…

Street Fight Daily: Reddit Targets Locations, Facebook’s Billion Mobile Users

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.. Reddit Introduces Location-Targeted Promoted Posts (Wall Street Journal)… Facebook Posts Earnings Beat as Mobile Soars Past One Billion Monthly Users (Recode)… Uber Drives for Asian Expansion (Financial Times)…

Yext Says It Will Be Profitable By 2015 — Here’s How

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Over the past 23 months, the New York-based startup has silenced critics, turning the listing-synching concept into a cash cow that helped the company generate over $34 million in revenue last year. In an interview last week, Yext CEO Howard Lerman told Street Fight that the company expects to generate $56 million in 2014, and hit $85 million — and profitability — by 2015.