Street Fight Daily: Foursquare’s New Sales Force, Consolidation at the Counter
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Foursquare Beefs Up Sales Team (MediaPost)
To sell the dream of location-based ad targeting, Foursquare has added several executives to its growing sales team. Tyler Simmons, a former executive at The Exchange Lab, will lead programmatic partnerships, a division to sell the company’s new ad tech product Pinpoint which targets consumers based on the places they’ve been.
Programmatic Advertising Is Zooming In on Local — Will News Sites Be Ready? (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: It’s human nature to be hopeful about what’s new, especially if the emerging numbers on recent performance look promising, and programmatic’s do — but when you examine the details of Borrell Associates’s survey of 102 ad managers, Borrell bullish projections do indeed look more realistic than wishful.
Bigcommerce Set to Make First Acquisition as Rival Shopify Preps for IPO (Recode)
Bigcommerce, a heavily-funded software maker that helps small businesses set up online stores, is close to announcing its first acquisition, according to two people familiar with the deal. The Austin-based company is buying Zing, a startup that makes checkout software and inventory management tools for brick-and-mortar businesses.
How Brick-and-Mortar Brands are Using the Apple Watch (Street Fight)
Steven Jacobs: The Apple Watch started to arrive at homes over the weekend for the few who managed to make the cut during pre-orders earlier this month. We took a look at a few of the best ways brick-and-mortar businesses are using the Apple Watch to open doors, deliver recipes and even order burritos.
Apple Maps Now Using Wikipedia, YellowPages Group of Canada & Dianping As Data Sources (Apple Maps Marketing)
Quickly on the heels of adding data from TripAdvisor and Booking.com, Apple Maps now appears to be using information from Wikipedia, YellowPages Group of Canada and Dianping, China’s version of Yelp, to enhance the data. It’s not clear if Apple Maps is getting data directly from YPG or that it is citing YPG as a source since they supply data to Yelp.
Chrome Notifications, ‘The Physical Web’ and Google’s War on Apps (Marketing Land)
Greg Sterling: Chrome notifications are very significant for developers and publishers — and for search. Most retailers, developers and publishers are struggling for user acquisition and retention when it comes to apps. Engagement tools like location-based notifications simply weren’t available on the mobile web, until now.
This Is How Uber Will Take Over the World (BuzzFeed)
Uber’s uniquely local approach to common transportation woes has very quickly transformed an upstart company into an industry juggernaut. But now, as it looks to globalize its ride-hailing business, Uber must adapt the hyperlocal approach that served it so well in the United States to foreign and emerging markets.
Starbucks to Ramp Up Mobile Payments as It Climbs to 19% of US Store Tender (Drum)
Starbucks is to “significantly” ramp up the rollout of its mobile order-and-pay capability, which it has claimed now accounts for 19 per cent of its US store tender. After launching last December, Starbucks said it now receives 8 million weekly mobile payments, which customers can currently use in 650 stores across the US.
Nextdoor Nabs Former Square Design Director Paco Viñoly to Help Build Its Brand (Recode)
Nextdoor, a neighborhood social networking company, has hired Square’s former design director Paco Viñoly as its new VP of Design. Viñoly joined the company in late March and will lead everything design-related at Nextdoor from internal design — the physical look and feel of the office — to product design and events.
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