Street Fight Daily: Uber Reportedly Losing Money Despite VC Success, Yelp and ProPublica Team Up
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Here Are the Internal Documents that Prove Uber Is a Money Loser (Gawker)
Uber is presumed to be a financial titan and a sure-thing IPO in the near future. But one thing that’s frequently missing from the conversation about its inevitable dominance over virtually every facet of our lives is the answer to a fundamental question: Does it make money? According to internal financial documents, the answer is a resounding no.
ProPublica Teams Up With Yelp to Make It Easier to Find Good Local Health Care Services (NiemanLab)
ProPublica is collaborating with Yelp to help provide better health care information on medical facilities and other providers. The idea is that finding a good doctor, nursing home, or dialysis clinic in your neighborhood will now be as easy as finding a reliable taco joint.
Click-to-Calls Are Clicking — And a Lot of the Sales Are Close to Home (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: A new study from Marchex has put a dollar amount on the business generated when consumers tap on a click-to-call ad or search listing on their mobile device: more than $1 trillion each year.
Here’s How Facebook Is Turning Its Local Ad Unit Into a Customer Service Channel (AdWeek)
Facebook is letting users respond to local-awareness ads with private messages, turning the promos into customer-service tools. The feature, which evidently will not be available to national brands, includes a “Send Message” button that local marketers can affix to their ads.
Prompt.ly Launches App to Help ‘Solopreneurs’ Manage Their (Very) Small Businesses (Street Fight)
The platform, which provided scheduling, invoicing, payments and promotions, recently launched a mobile app that helps small business owners — what CEO Richard Titus calls “solopreneurs” — easily manage their businesses on their phone.
Square is Advancing $1 Million Per Day to Small Businesses (Fortune)
Square publicly launched its merchant cash advance service, Square Capital, in 2014 to support small businesses who need cash fast and may not qualify for a loan from a bank. According to one source, Square Capital is now one of the payments company’s fastest growing businesses.
GoDaddy’s Sales Jump 17% (Wall Street Journal)
GoDaddy said sales jumped 17% in the second quarter, but the newly public company also saw its net loss widen as it moves into the digital expansion of small businesses. (Subscription required.)
What Made Google Great May Be Its Biggest Risk (ReadWrite)
When Google launched its search engine, it showed us what we thought was important. But the company seems to have abandoned the pioneering work of facilitating humanity online, and until it embraces the role that everyday people play in its success, it may never truly amaze us like it first did with search.
Study: Non-Mobile-Friendly Sites Disappearing From Top Google Results (Search Engine Land)
Greg Sterling: Remarkably, there are many brands and companies that still don’t have mobile-friendly sites. According to a new study, there are clear visibility, ranking, and usability consequences.
Will TripAdvisor Be the Next Airbnb? It Seems to Be Trying (Skift)
While much of the attention on TripAdvisor in the past couple of weeks has revolved around its emergence as a hotel booking site, the company’s Flipkey unit has been quietly adding Airbnb-style room rentals to its existing portfolio of vacation rentals.
The Kings of a Cashless World (Business Insider)
The cashless revolution is in full motion, and it’s the smaller players – start-ups, small businesses and consumers – who will ultimately shape the new world order.
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