Street Fight Daily: Nextdoor’s Billion Dollar Valuation, SXSW Embraces Beacons
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Nextdoor Social Network Digs Deep Into Neighborhoods (New York Times)
The company will announce on Wednesday that it has raised $110 million in venture capital from investors like Redpoint Ventures and Insight Venture Partners. The new investment values the three-and-a-half-year-old start-up at about $1.1 billion, putting the company among the sharply rising number of tech start-ups with 10-figure valuations.
How Google Is Fixing Its Small Business Problem (Street Fight)
When the churn rate in its search advertising product spiked in 2011, the company’s managers (including Joe DeMike, now the head of the customer experience lab) did a deep dive to find a solution.
SXSW to Get (More) Social With the Help of iBeacons (Recode)
SXSW will use a mobile app that takes advantage of location-aware Apple iBeacon technology to bring people together. The newly launched app will allow festival attendees to check in to venues, learn who is nearby and get relevant information such as which of the 2,000 acts scheduled to appear this year is performing onstage.
As GrubHub and Yelp Expand Ordering and Delivery, Opportunities Remain for Smaller Players (Street Fight)
David Bloom, the CEO of Ordrx — an open platform allowing merchants, primarily restaurants, to share their menus and inventory — says that recent waves in the online food ordering industry are indicative of myriad opportunities for local restaurants and smaller markets.
YP Automates Local And Mobile Search Buys For National Brands (MediaPost)
The company has announced the launch of ypSearch Marketplace, a keyword-bid local search marketplace that enables national brands to reach YP’s 80 million monthly users across its network. The move turned a once old-time directory into a local, real-time marketplace.
Uber Acquires Mapping Startup Decarta (Mashable)
Uber, the popular ride-sharing startup, is acquiring the mapping and search startup deCarta for an unspecified amount. Founded in 1996, the San Jose startup provides a software platform that focuses on location-based features, including mapping, local search and turn-by-turn navigation.
How Citymaps Could Make Yelp Obsolete (CityLab)
Yelp’s geolocated catalog of nearby restaurants and destinations is useful, but only if you trust the opinions of the self-selecting group that chooses to rate, comment, and publish illustrated essay collections there, or those businesses who’ve paid for prominence.
Mobile Wallets: Marketing Platform of the Future (AdAge)
As consumer usage begins to reach critical mass over the next three years, mobile wallets will see an integration of value-added services that push the platform beyond payments. The result will be a new marketing channel.
Six Months After Acquisition, Caviar Has Tripled Order Volume And More Than Doubled Headcount (TechCrunch)
Last August, payments startup Square acquired San Francisco-based food delivery startup Caviar for a reported $90 million. Since then, the company has been growing fast, both in terms of order volume and the size of the internal team.
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