Street Fight Daily: Waze Partners With Lyft, Craigslist Competitor 5miles Now Valued at $300M+

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…

Waze to Scoop up More Data through New Partnerships (Wall Street Journal)
Waze changed how millions of people drive by convincing them to share their locations in return for real-time, crowdsourced traffic information. The company, acquired by Google in 2013 for $1 billion, has unveiled new software to scoop up more of this information, letting other companies weave its data more deeply into their own mobile apps. It launched with six partners, including ride-sharing company Lyft.

Mobile App 5miles Raises $30M at a $300M+ Valuation to Rival Craigslist in Classifieds (TechCrunch)
Can a mobile app topple the behemoth that is Craigslist? We’ve asked the question before (more than once, in fact), and it looks like it may be in order again: 5miles, an app developed in China but being rolled out in the U.S., has raised $30 million in funding to beat the classifieds leader at its own game. 5miles was created to be mobile-first, and it comes with some AI-based vetting features.

PlaceIQ Looking to Build a Role for Location Tech Into TV, OOH, and Even Direct Mail (Street Fight)
Brands don’t want only to measure the persuasive powers of their mobile ads. They also want to know the efficacy of their TV, OOH, online, and even direct mail efforts, which is where PlaceIQ, with its freshly acquired $25 million, wants to deliver bigger results.

Bootler Brings Comparison Shopping to Food Delivery Services (Chicago Tribune)
A startup called Bootler plans to feed on the food delivery boom with a search engine that makes comparing costs and delivery times easier. Bootler has launched in Chicago with a platform that allows users to compare menu items, prices, delivery times, and fees, and order minimums across a variety of services.

Amazon Has a Plan to Make Money When You Buy Stuff on Other Websites (Business Insider)
Amazon, which has hundreds of millions of credit cards on file, offers a service called Pay with Amazon allowing third-party retailers to let shoppers use their Amazon payment and shipping information at check-out. The company revealed that 23 million customers have used Pay with Amazon since it launched in 2013.

Taking ‘Local’ Right Down to the Keystroke (Street Fight)
Rick Robinson: A new group of companies is finding ways into local services by getting in between consumers’ desires and fulfillment of their desires at the core level: where their thumbs are hitting the glass. Startups like PopKey and Slash have found what feels like a Trojan Horse into our stream of communication.

Homejoy Cofounder Forgets Failure, Starts New Cleaning Startup (Forbes)
Aaron Cheung, the former vice president of growth at Homejoy, has sent an email to past Homejoy customers announcing Homeaglow, a new home cleaning service. The email’s subject line read “Homejoy’s Back! Kind of…” and said that the service would be launching in beta.

Google Introduces Candidate Cards in Search for Presidential Election Season (Search Engine Land)
Google is giving Republican and Democratic candidates a privileged place in search in 2016. The company has launched what it says is an experimental feature that will create a prominent placement for the candidates’ own messages and content in a horizontal carousel in search results.

Postmates Wants to Deliver Your New Pants (Fortune)
Postmates is known for delivering McDonald’s Big Macs, Starbucks lattes, and 7-Eleven Slurpees to people’s homes. But the Silicon Valley upstart is eyeing retail and ecommerce as its next big opportunity for local delivery.

Facebook Is Expanding Its Burgeoning Ad Network to the Mobile Web (Adweek)
Facebook is expanding its ad network from just third-party apps to the mobile web. The company will begin making its Facebook Audience Network available for publishers and advertisers outside of publishers’ native apps.

For Brick and Mortar to Beat Ecommerce, It Takes Mind, Body, and Spirit (Street Fight)
Manpreet Singh: While many onlookers think that increased comparison shopping, faster and cheaper delivery options like drones, and the convenience of shopping at home equal doom for physical stores, the reality is that the economy (like the people behind it) is largely driven by the irrational.

Lyft Agrees to Settle Class-Action Lawsuit With California Drivers (New York Times)
Lyft has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by drivers in California who sought to be recognized as full-time employees eligible for benefits, rather than as independent contractors. Under the settlement, Lyft drivers will continue to be classified as contractors. Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney representing the drivers, said that the settlement would “provide substantial benefits to drivers and distribute reimbursement for some of the expenses they have incurred while driving for Lyft.”

P&G Tests Tide Pickup Laundry Service in Chicago (AdAge)
Procter & Gamble’s Tide has launched a test of home laundry pickup and delivery in Chicago, the packaged-goods giant’s latest in a series of efforts to get into services.

ParkWhiz Acquires BestParking, Announces $24M Raise (TechCrunch)
On-demand parking app ParkWhiz has announced an acquisition that will bring its customers, particularly those in the New York market, even greater access. ParkWhiz operates much like other startups in this space do, by connecting users with available parking locations in their city as effortlessly as possible through their mobile app.

Retailers: Twitter Is the ‘Left Behind’ Platform (Digiday)
Retailers — big, small, online-only, and brick-and-mortar — have expressed frustrations with Twitter as a social platform. Many echoed the view of Silicon Valley that Twitter simply hasn’t evolved quickly enough.

WeFuel Is a New App That Brings the Gas Station to You — If You Live in Palo Alto (Mashable)
Do you hate going to the gas station? Now, with the push of a button, WeFuel will come and refuel your car for you, whether you’re at work, at home, or even at the mall.

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