Street Fight Daily: Radius Raises $55M, Square’s New Register
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
Radius Raises $54.7 Million to Improve Sales Leads Using Big Data (Wall Street Journal)
The San Francisco-based company has raised another $54.7 million from Founders Fund and several other new and current investors, taking total funding to about $80.1 million. CEO Darian Shirazi argues that none of the companies going after business-to-business marketing—including Dun & Bradstreet a “core competency in data science.” (Subscription required)
Yellow Pages Publisher Acquires LocalVox (Street Fight)
TBC Holdings, the parent company of The Berry Company, announced earlier today the purchase of NYC-based LocalVox Media. LocalVox, which provides a wide range of marketing software platforms designed specifically for local and hyperlocal marketing, sees the deal as an opportunity to become the go-to app for hyperlocal marketers from coast to coast.
Square Is Making a Register That Takes Bitcoin and Apple Pay (Wired)
There’s still one big pothole in bitcoin’s bumpy road to mainstream adoption: Your local coffee shop. But the situation is about to change, according to Square CEO Jack Dorsey. He says that Square is building a register that will allow companies to accept bitcoin as well as Apple’s new contactless payment system, Apple Pay.
Five Lessons Google Learned About Selling to Small Businesses (Street Fight)
James Croom has spent five years in the company’s small business team. He said Monday that the company’s new Google My Business project builds on some learnings from the company’s Get Your Business Online effort launched in 2009 to drive business across the world to build websites.
Hotels Use Online Reviews as Blueprint for Renovations (New York Times)
As hotels in the United States continue on a surge in spending on renovations, an ever-more-important factor driving this investment is the growing clout of review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp, and booking sites like Hotels.com. Hotel brands are reading what travelers say about them — and their competitors — and planning their investments accordingly.
What You Should Know About Jeremy Stoppelman (Vanity Fair)
He was just another gangly Web 2.0 kid with a good job in Silicon Valley (at PayPal) and a big dream: in his case, to launch an online successor to the Yellow Pages. But something funny happened shortly after Jeremy Stoppelman’s project, Yelp, went live: its users embraced the site’s “Write a review” feature to a degree far greater than anticipated.
Telenav Copies Foursquare’s Swarm With New Social App, HopOver (TechCrunch)
The company is trying its hand at something a little more social with the launch of an iPhone app that lets you see what your friends are up to, and if they’re nearby. The app is called HopOver, as it allows you to invite friends to join you and hang out by creating a “Hop” – aka an event or invitation.
Lyft Acquires Shared Ride Startup Hitch To Bolster Its Lyft Line Service (TechCrunch)
One of the first services to focus on actual ride-sharing capability was a startup called Hitch, which launched before Lyft Line, before UberPool and before Sidecar Shared Rides. The Hitch founders today will be joining one-time competitor Lyft in order to boost that company’s own shared ride offering.
Why San Francisco May Not Be The Most Useful Reference Point For The Uber-ification Of Local Transport (Pando)
With taxi industries and local regulators looking to understand the implications of a ride-sharing dominated local transportation market, San Francisco is held up as the prototype. After all, the Bay Area is home to Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar, and thus was the initial market for each of these services. But San Francisco may not be a great prototype for other markets.
Will iOS 8 Disclosures Shut Down Location Access for Most Apps? (Screenwerk)
Greg Strerling: My initial sense is that most iOS 8 users, when confronted with one of these messages, are not going to permit “gratuitous” use of location in the background. In fact, my visceral and immediate reaction to receiving this message for the first time this weekend was to shut down location for 85% of the apps on my phone — “never.”
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