Street Fight Daily: ZocDoc Raising $152M, FAA Bans Delivery Drones
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
ZocDoc Raising $152 million at $1.6 Billion Valuation (Fortune)
ZocDoc, an online find-a-doctor portal, is raising a new round of funding worth $152 million, valuing the company at $1.6 billion, according to a Delaware Certificate of Corporation filing pulled by VC Experts. The company attracted the attention of traditional healthcare companies, including Aetna, which reportedly offered to acquire the company for $300 million in 2013.
How Retailers Can Bridge the Gap With Beacons (Street Fight)
Greg McAllister: Using beacons, content can be delivered to a consumers’ mobile device that augments the shopping experience and bolsters the relevancy of the merchant’s real-time communications based on the consumer’s location and real-time behavior. As a result, the messaging can be perceived by the consumer less as “marketing” and more as “helpful.”
FAA Bans The Use Of Drones To Deliver Packages (TechCrunch)
The FAA made it plain this week that Amazon won’t be able to deliver packages using a drone in the near future. In a document soliciting feedback regarding drone policy the FAA calls “delivering packages to people for a fee” a non-hobby or recreation-based drone activity.
8 Strategies for Reaching Out to Online Influencers (Street Fight)
Rather than sitting idly by while influencers dictate what’s being said about their businesses on social media and review websites, merchants are beginning to reach out to these social media users on a personal basis. Here are eight strategies that marketers should consider when reaching out to influencers online.
RelayRides’ Altered Future Points To A Ride Sharing World Dominated By Lyft And Uber, Not Zipcar (Forbes)
RelayRides just raised $25 million from Canaan Partners, likely boosting its valuation over the $100 million level. As the company finally raises a large funding round to expand, its future reflects a future for rides in the share economy that’s no longer dominated by Zipcar, but must find room alongside Lyft and Uber.
AirBnB Tests Group Travel Partnerships With London’s Citysocializer (TechCrunch)
AirBnB has signed what appears to be a new deal to offer ‘social group travel experiences’ to independent travelers. It’s partnered with citysocializer, and app and web platform which, like Meetup, helps organise real-world social events for new groups of people in cities, by charging a monthly fee.
Mobile Devices Have Turned Us Into Advertising Hungry, Nonstop Retail Monsters (Pando)
A new report from Critero saw that we’re significantly more likely to click on mobile ads than on desktop. We’re not only online a lot more now thanks to smartphones, but we’re a lot more amenable to brand messages.
What Happens to a Place When the Data About It Is Lost? (Atlantic)
Finn Arne Jorgesnen: While certainly not the only possible view of space and its meanings, Gowalla and other geosocial networking apps opened up the landscape and covered it in data generated by people who had passed by, lived here, experienced these places, and then chosen to share them. But the more of yourself and your world you invest in the network, the more vulnerable you are to its obsolescence.
The Mobile Strategy Gap (and How to Close Yours) (AdAge)
Josh Bernoff: But even as the mobile opportunity is becoming visible, the mobile change is happening so rapidly that it is catching most firms flatfooted. This is the mobile strategy gap — the yawning void between the boundless mobile opportunity and the lack of corporate vision.
Get Street Fight Daily in your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletter.
