Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial CFO Departs, New Features for Swarm

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology

livingsocial-logoLivingSocial CFO to Depart; New CEO Due Soon (Recode)
LivingSocial CFO John Bax will be leaving later this month. Bax, who joined the deals company in 2010, will take a role at a company he declined to name. Confirmation of Bax’s departure comes as the company closes in on announcing a replacement for CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy, who said in January that he would be stepping down.

6 Marketing Automation Tools for Small Businesses (Street Fight)
Small business owners have enough on their plates, without having to manually manage repetitive marketing tasks. Here are six marketing automation systems that local merchants can use to build smarter local marketing campaigns.

Foursquare’s Swarm iOS App Gets Mayor Leaderboards, Easier Sharing, and More (The Next Web)
Foursquare has released an update to its Swarm app for iOS that now shows mayor leaderboards amongst your friends on every check-in. The app also now includes easier sharing to Facebook and Twitter, faster and more accurate check-ins, and photos from venues.

Assessing Yelp’s New Messaging Functionality (Street Fight)
Mikel Zaremba: Yelp recently rolled out a new feature that allows consumers to send and receive instant messages and interact with local businesses that have claimed their business page. While this isn’t groundbreaking, it does put “social customer service” front-and-center on the reviews site.

88% Of Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations (SearchEngineLand)
BrightLocal has released the findings of its annual Local Consumer Review Survey, which reveals the growing importance of online reviews in the purchasing decision. While 39% now say they read reviews on a regular basis (vs. 32% in 2013), only 12% do not read reviews at all (vs. 15% in 2013).

Uber Begins Undercutting NYC Taxis With 20% Price Drop (VentureBeat)
Uber has announced that it is “now cheaper than an NYC taxi,” after lowering UberX fares in New York by 20 percent. Uber states that the current prices are “only in effect for a limited time.” This warning somewhat alludes to the common monopolistic strategy of dropping prices and raising them back up after achieving market control.

Craigslist’s Revenue Up 101%; Measuring Its Impact (Local Onliner)
Peter Krasilovsky: According to “conservative” estimates compiled by our friends at AIM Group for its annual Craigslist report, the site’s revenues grew 101 percent in 2013 from $166.5 Million to $335.7 Million. While Craigslist now serves 700 markets around the world, AIM Group says the vast majority of the revenue comes from 54 markets.

Is Google Shopping Express Destined to Become Webvan? (ScreenWerk)
Greg Sterling: If the company can connect Product Listing Ads, online payments and delivery it creates a “virtuous cycle” where merchants and consumers are both tied to the service (and merchants to PLAs, etc.) and it throws off an enormous amount of “closed loop” shopping data.

Adtile Raises $4.5M To Create A Marketplace For Interactive Mobile Ads (TechCrunch)
Adtile, a startup that says it’s bringing an “app store”-style approach to mobile ads, is announcing that it has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding. The company’s Motion Ads format asks users to interact with their ads by shaking, turning, and otherwise playing with them.

Sponsored Content: Mobile Media Summit Chicago Speakers Announced (Street Fight)
The third-annual Mobile Media Summit Chicago is on July 29th at the exclusive Mid-American Club. The summit will bring together the biggest names in advertising and marketing to discuss how mobile is changing the media mix for hundreds of senior agency, media, brand and publisher executives. Click for more, plus a Street Fight discount.

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