Street Fight Daily: Mobile Search To Exceed Desktop, Instacart’s Big Round
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Mobile Search Will Surpass Desktop in 2015 (eMarketer)
2015 will see mobile search reach the tipping point — the stage at which the majority of spend, organic traffic and paid clicks comes from smartphones and tablets, surpassing traditional desktop/laptop search activity. ROI on mobile search is improving, but it will continue to trail desktop search ROI next year.
How Digital Is Destroying the Mechanics of High-Margin Products (Street Fight)
Tige Savage: The Internet is positioned to transform companies that have been selling over-priced physical products. Their absurdly high margins have been hidden from consumers by complicated purchase processes that look a lot like services — but not for much longer.
Instacart Is Raising North Of $100 Million At A $2 Billion Valuation (TechCrunch)
Instacart, the home grocery delivery service that launched back in 2012, is close to raising a massive Series C round of funding north of $100 million, according to sources. The raise will value the startup at $2 billion, or more than quadruple the $400 million valuation of its Series B financing from June.
Gilt Groupe Co-founder Tries Her Hand at On-Demand (Street Fight)
Earlier this year, Glamsquad, a seed stage startup offering in-home hair and makeup services, brought on Gilt Groupe co-founder and early advisor Alexandra Wilkis Wilson as chief executive. Street Fight caught up with Wilkis Wilson last week to discuss the challenges in merging the data-driven ecommerce approach with the realities of running a real-world service.
We Can’t Trust Uber (New York Times)
We already regulate sensitive data, ranging from health records to financial information. We must update oversight for 21st-century data as well. When we’re picked up on a rainy street corner, it’s not enough to know where the car is going. We need to know where our data is going, and how it’s used.
Six Drivers Of The $700B Mobile Internet (TechCrunch)
Tim Mercel: Mobile revenue will more than triple to $700 billion by 2017, there was over $19 billion invested and $94 billion exits in the last 12 months, and there are 32 billion-dollar mobile Internet companies already. Understanding what’s driving these big numbers is critical for entrepreneurs, investors and corporates, so let’s dig in.
Who Profits? Care.com Finds Sitters for Baby or Dad (Businessweek)
Care.com has more than 13 million registered users and is adding 15,000 a day, or about 10 a minute. It’s the largest in a growing group, including Sittercity.com and Urbansitter.com, in the business of connecting millions of people looking for domestic help with millions more looking for work.
Drizly Opens Its API to Bring Alcohol Delivery to the Likes of MillerCoors & Foursquare (Bostino)
Word spread late last week that the delivery startup Drizly inked a deal with MillerCoors. The deal marked the first time a major American brewer has partnered with an e-commerce company to sell its beer online — yet was also part of a bigger API launch that other brands, such as local discovery platform Foursquare and its sister social app Swarm, are going to be benefiting from.
Foursquare Is Finally Coming To The iPad (VentureBeat)
It took a while, but Foursquare is finally arriving on the iPad after years of sticking to smartphones. The company will finally release its Foursquare (not Swarm) app for the iPad, Foursquare chief revenue officer Steven Rosenblatt said at Mashable’s Media Summit.
Get Street Fight Daily in your inbox! Subscribe to our newsletter.
