Street Fight Daily: Yelp Looks for Buyer, Uber Bids on Nokia Maps
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Yelp Reportedly Explores a Sale — Could Priceline Be a Fit? (Street Fight)
Reports surfaced Thursday that the reviews site was in conversation with investment bankers to find a buyer for the multi-billion dollar company. No prospective buyers were named in the report, but in addition to the usual suspects, one less likely company stands out as a potential candidate: Priceline Group.
Uber Joins the Bidding for Here, Nokia’s Digital Mapping Service (New York Times)
Uber has submitted a bid for Here, the main competitor to Google Maps, for as much as $3 billion, according to three people with knowledge of the offer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Here is owned by Nokia, the Finnish telecom giant, which announced last month that it was considering selling the business.
Openings and New Hires at Verve Mobile, UpCity, xAd,Truecaller (Street Fight)
Every two weeks, Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in local — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. We look at job changes at Verve Mobile, xAd, UpCity, TrueCaller, YP and more.
Google Integrates Food Ordering Into Search Results For Restaurants (TechCrunch)
Google now lets users in the U.S. order food from six companies—Seamless, Grubhub, Eat24, Delivery.com, BeyondMenu, and MyPizza.com—directly from search results. If someone searches for a restaurant that offers delivery through one of those providers, an option for “place an order” will show up in its Google information.
Thousands of Rogue Restaurant Websites Diverting Customers to OrderAhead Deliveries (GeekWire)
Thousands of websites linked to the OrderAhead food delivery service are posing falsely as authorized restaurant websites — diverting traffic from official restaurant sites and taking orders for food without the knowledge of restaurant operators.
Just Eat Snaps Up Menulog For $687M to Enter Australia and New Zealand (TechCrunch)
Online meal delivery company Just Eat has agreed to purchase Menulog for £445 million (about $687 million), marking its entrance into New Zealand and Australia. Menulog, which has 5,500 restaurants on its platform and 1.4 million active users, claims to be the largest food delivery business in those two countries.
Yik Yak: A Glimpse Inside an Often Cruel, but Often Revealing World (Washington Post)
There’s another side to Yik Yak. To see it, just download the app and search for any college campus. What you’ll see are mere fragments — like fleeting words overheard on a bus. Maybe you want to know more, or less, or wish you had never eavesdropped.
OpenTable, Dash, Others Get Fast Company in Mobile Check-pay Industry (Chicago Tribune)
Startups such as Dash, Reserve, Cover and TabbedOut, plus pioneer Open Table, let people pay their restaurant tabs on their phones through mobile apps — a growing phenomenon that some say will lead to the day when most people make restaurant payments on mobile devices.
PayPal Boosts Loan Sizes for Small-Business Lending (Wall Street Journal)
Paypal, a unit of eBay for now, said it has doled out $500 million in loans in the first year-and-a-half since it introduced the lending program. And rival Square recently said it had extended more than $100 million in cash advances in the year since it started its own version.
LBMA Podcast: Bytelight Acquired, Density’s Andrew Farah (Street Fight)
On the show: Samsung in Italy uses VR to transport sick kids to Movieland; Signpost and Unacast raise money; Westfield launches their own OOH network in their Australian malls; Pepsi’s innovative Naked Juice bike path marketing.
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