Street Fight Daily: Square Kills Wallet App, Yelp Integrates Booking Service
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
Square Pulls Failed Wallet App as Troubles Mount (Wall Street Journal)
Square is shuttering its Square Wallet app for smartphones, a sign the mobile-payment startup is struggling to expand beyond its low-margin business of credit-card readers. Square Wallet was recently pulled from Apple App Store and Google Play because the app “didn’t have a lot of the utility value” for consumers.
3 Mobile Marketing Musts for Brick-and-Mortar Retailers (Street Fight)
FOver the past few years, we’ve seen the mobile marketing industry mature, with new standards and best practices emerging to help marketers reach mobile consumers as they move throughout their day. Here’s three mobile marketing strategy, which have become table stakes for physical retailers.
Yelp Bites Back At OpenTable, TripAdvisor And Google With Free Yelp Reservations Service (TechCrunch)
Incorporating technology from SeatMe, an OpenTable competitor it acquired last year, Yelp will now offer restaurants the ability to take bookings with no fee paid. It looks like Yelp Reservations will offer at least some of the same features as the paid SeatMe service, including the ability to accept invites and alert customers with confirmations.
5 Platforms That Gather In-Store Analytics from Surveillance Footage (Street Fight)
Nearly 64% of retailers have installed some form of IP-connected video surveillance system to protect against theft. Now, a relatively new category of hyperlocal vendors are providing businesses with new ways to capitalize on the technology they already have installed.
Apple Reportedly Integrating NFC Technology into iPhone 6 (MacRumors)
Apple is gearing up to incorporate Near Field Communication (NFC) technology in the iPhone 6, according to a new repot. The report also notes that Apple has struck a deal with China UnionPay to integrate the banking company’s services into Passbook and elsewhere.
After Going On A Twitter Tirade, Former PayPal Exec Rakesh Agrawal Tells Us He’s Sorry For An Experiment Gone Awry (BusinessInsider)
A week ago, people in the technology industry had their eyes glued to the Twitter account of PayPal executive Rakesh “Rocky” Agrawal. When we talked to him, he tried to explain that his actions were a series of tests. He claims that he was essentially doing research on different use cases for his next product.
LivingSocial Is Half the Size It Used To Be (Washington Post)
The District-based deals company counts roughly 2,000 employees around the globe, Chief Marketing Officer Barry Judge said in an interview last week. That’s about half of LivingSocial’s stated size during its days of rapid global expansion. Then, the firm’s global headcount surpassed 4,000 and its local presence topped 1,000.
Cisco Launches Connected Billboard in San Francisco (AdAge)
Cisco has placed an Internet-connected billboard near San Francisco International airport that will deliver specific messaging based on a driver’s speed in order to highlight what it calls “the Internet of everything.” For now, the company primarily wants to show off some of its technology in time for Cisco Live — its largest b-to-b event of the year.
YP Adds Listings and Reputation Management to Product Suite (Screenwerk)
Greg Sterling: Business listings syndication is now a “foundational” product in the local market. Increasingly, the channels that sell marketing services to SMBs offer one, although they’re not all exactly the same. This morning YP announced a new product that it calls “Listing Pro,” which rounds out the suite of marketing products for local business owners from YP.
How Local Services Would Change Google, Bing Shopping (Media Post)
Google and Bing potentially forfeit millions of dollars annually by not making local and national services available through their Shopping sites. Ratings and recommendations, which are key to providing input for consumers, would put Google and Bing in direct competition with sites like Angie’s List, Yelp or even Groupon and Living Social.
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