Street Fight Daily: Google Maps Chief Replaced, Walgreens’ Mobile Strategy
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
One of Google’s Most Influential Execs Was Replaced as the Head of Google Maps and Is Biding his Time (Business Insider)
One of Google’s most influential engineering executives is weighing his options at the company roughly six months after he was replaced as head of the maps group, sources say. Brian McClendon, who was vice president of Google Maps, was replaced by Jen Fitzpatrick, another Google veteran.
Is there a Local Marketing Play for Snapchat? (Street Fight)
Mike Boland: Given its engagement levels, quality, and potential audience scale, Snapchat isn’t just competing with Facebook and other native ad platforms — it’s competing with television. And for that reason, its local play will be large national advertisers that increasingly localize campaigns.
Walgreens Uses Mobile Apps to Solve In-Store Headaches (Digiday)
Walgreens, like many retailers, is looking to digital as a vehicle for improving the in-store experience — and getting people to buy more. The pharmacy’s digital strategy is anchored around convenience: Its app lets customers navigate snacks and sinus meds with in-store product searches, and fill prescriptions with a few taps, all on mobile.
How Local Papers Could Out-Maneuver ‘Ubers’ in the Digital Space (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: Papers could convert their “subscribers” into “members” who get special treatment with access to a digital page called “Rapid City Central” (or somesuch), which would serve up information that makes the community a better place to live and work, or not, based on reliable data and community feedback.
Retale, The App That Puts Weekly Store Circulars On Your Smartphone, Raises $12 Million (TechCrunch)
In the mobile age, people aren’t relying on newspapers as much to get their daily news, and they’re not browsing through printed flyers to find out what’s on sale, either. Now, Retale, a mobile app that lets you browse store circulars from your smartphone, is announcing an additional $12 million in new funding for its business.
Once Left For Dead, is Foursquare Coming Back? (San Francisco Business Times)
Between its deal with Twitter and rumors that Yahoo is interested in acquiring it, Foursquare has suddenly become very relevant again. It started when Twitter announced it was partnering with Foursquare to bring an accurate, location-tagging feature to its 288 million monthly users.
Start-Ups Try to Challenge Google, at Least on Mobile Search (New York Times)
After a decade in which entrepreneurs and investors steered clear of Google’s home turf, venture capitalists have plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into dozens of search start-ups because they say they believe the Internet giant cannot dominate search on mobile devices the way it has on personal computers.
How Not to Do Local SEO in a Post-Pigeon Era (Search Engine Land)
Neil Patel: In spite of the local SEO shakeup, a lot of marketers are still doing it wrong. Not only was Pigeon confusing, but it also asked us to break some of our long-ingrained local optimization habits. Repeatedly performing the same local optimization tasks time and again has ossified them into a fixture of local marketing.
Local Media Companies Need to Jump on Beacons (Geomarketing)
As consumer eyes continue to shift to their mobile devices, Gordon Borrell, CEO of research and consulting firm Borrell Associates, argues that now is the right time for newspapers, radio stations, and other media organizations to start experimenting with the Bluetooth technology.
Mastercard on the New Face of POS (PYMNTS)
In a recent interview, Oliver Manahan, VP of U.S. Emerging Payments at MasterCard, talks about why the new face of POS is particularly valuable to merchants, the shift in POS power and the differences he’s observed across various industries as technologies evolve.
Data Fusion Heralds City Attractiveness Ranking (MIT Technology Review)
The ability of any city to attract visitors is an important metric for town planners, businesses based on tourism, traffic planners, residents, and so on. And there are increasingly varied ways of measuring this thanks to the growing volumes of city-related data generated by with social media, and location-based data.
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