Street Fight Daily: Clinkle Finally Launches, Ron Johnson’s New Startup

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

Clinkle-logoClinkle Finally Launches Its Payments Service (But Not The One Originally Promised) (GigaOm)
Clinkle promised a digital wallet. Instead it delivered a piece of plastic. Its debit card will be integrated into a new smartphone rewards networks, but it’s a far cry from the mobile payments technology it hyped.

In Navigating Supply and Demand, Groupon Hopes for New Life (Street Fight)
During a presentation at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local event in New Orleans Tuesday, Dan Roarty, vice president of local commerce at Groupon, positioned the company’s deal marketplace as one part of a much more ambitious effort to create a platform that connects local supply and local demand well-beyond the confines of an email blast.

Former Apple Exec, J.C. Penney CEO to Launch Delivery Startup (Business Insider)
Ron Johnson, who left Apple in 2011 for a controversial stint as the CEO of J.C. Penney, is launching a high-end, on-demand delivery service for gadgets. Johnson’s company will be more concerned with customer service and product troubleshooting, not unlike what Apple users go to the Genius Bar for.

Selling to Small Businesses: Getting Your Pitch Past the Gatekeepers (Street Fight)
Geoffrey Michener: Most inquiring sales reps tend to ask a gatekeeper when the decision maker will be available and then quickly end the sales call. This is a waste of a great opportunity to gather valuable intel. A gatekeeper can be your unwitting scout, giving you the information you need to better serve your prospective client.

Macy’s Aims to Become Retail Tech Powerhouse With Latest Moves (Fortune)
Macy’s is testing some ideas like same-day delivery or smart fitting rooms and implementing others that are ready for primetime, such as accepting the Apple Pay digital wallet and deploying iBeacon readers so it can zap personalized ads to customers as they walk through the store.

How Pandora Thinks About Advertising in the Connected Car (AdAge)
The music streaming service will be in one third of all new cars shipped this year. The company’s presence in connected cars is helping it think through what advertising in such cars will look like, giving it an early view into what will likely be an important advertising medium not too long from now.

The War Over Airbnb Gets Personal (New York Magazine)
One morning a few months ago, New Yorkers opened their eyes to a city that, seemingly overnight, had been blanketed in advertisements for a company called Airbnb. As the graffiti spread, it started to become clear that this was no run-of-the-mill ad defacement; it was a countercampaign, the latest battle in a full-scale war over Airbnb.

YP Puts GrubHub Buy Button On Search Directory, Focusing On Local Commerce (MediaPost)
YP has announced an agreement with GrubHub Wednesday that will allow consumers to order food through the search directory on mobile and desktop. The focus on local commerce allows consumers to search for a business listing on YP and complete the order directly on the site from desktops or mobile devices.

Groupon Doubles Down On Its DIY Deal Builder, Racks Up 25k Offers (TechCrunch)
Groupon is making efforts to ensure that the inventory of offers that it does have continues to grow. As part of that, Groupon is updating its Deal Builder, a do-it-yourself tool it launched in February for merchants to create and upload their own offers to Groupon, without working with live sales reps.

Google Expands Local Inventory Ads Beyond the US (TheNextWeb)
Last October, Google announced it was rolling out a couple of new local features for Google Shopping, one of which surfaced local availability for products within Product Listing Ads. These local inventory ads were US-only at first, but now Google is introducing them to five more markets – the UK, France, Germany, Japan and Australia.

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