Street Fight Daily: Amazon to Launch in $80 Billion Market, Uber Under Pressure
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Amazon Is About to Launch in a New $80 Billion Market (Business Insider)
The online retail giant is gearing up to launch its own own-brand foodstuffs for the first time “as soon as the end of the month.” These “private-label brands” will reportedly be called things like “Happy Belly” (including nuts, tea, oil), “Wickedly Prime” (snacks and treats), and “Mama Bear” (baby products). But they are designed and created by Amazon, with all the profits going straight to the company.
Homebrew VC Wants to Build Out Startups That Bring Value to Location (Street Fight)
The San Francisco-based firm has built up an impressive roster of investments in seed stage companies focused on the “bottom-up economy.” Co-founders Hunter Walk and Satya Patel met working at Google and have a particular interest in seeing businesses advance in tech and value-added location services.
Uber’s Ride-Sharing Dominance Comes Under Pressure (Wall Street Journal)
Several months ago, Uber Technologies Inc. seemed like the unstoppable king of ride-sharing. Apple Inc.’s $1 billion investment in a top rival caps a series of events showing how quickly that has changed. (Subscription required.)
Case Study: A Maryland Bakery’s Love/Hate Relationship with Facebook (Street Fight)
Never underestimate the power of social media. That’s a lesson that Capital City Cheesecake co-owner Meaghan Murphy learned the hard way while trying to get her Maryland-based bakery/café up and running in 2010. She thought word of mouth alone would be enough to build a sustainable business.
Amazon’s Customizable Dash Button Sold Out in Less Than a Day (Mashable)
The AWS IoT Button can connect with lots of different Amazon services without requiring any coding knowledge. But if you do know some programming, you can code the button to work with all sorts of things, allowing you to start a car, make a phone call or turn on a connected coffee maker.
Google: ‘No Current Plans’ for Ads in GBoard (Search Engine Land)
Google launched Gboard, its keyboard app for iOS, on Thursday, and as of Friday morning it was sitting in the top spot in the App Store’s chart of free apps. Among other things, Gboard brings Google search into any app with the press of the “G” icon. This, of course, could also mean bringing Google search ads to any app.
Closing the Loop: Online Loans Help Drive SMB Marketing (Local Onliner)
There is an increasing amount of overlap between front office functions (advertising, marketing, PR, presence management) and back office functions (human resources, scheduling, delivery, payment processing, accounting, business analysis). Now in the works: loans based on an analysis of business results and needs that are applied to specific marketing efforts.
How Jeff Bezos Reinvented The Washington Post (Business Insider)
In less than three years, Bezos has completely changed the outlook of the 140-year-old newspaper. Its readership has exploded, and its content has become more suitable for the digital world. Bezos has said he would like to refashion The Post as a “media and technology company.”
Should Yelp Start Worrying about Angie’s List? (Amigo Bulls)
Perhaps the biggest difference between Yelp and Angie’s List lies in their ad growth rates. Local ad revenue accounts for the bulk of each company’s revenue. While Yelp’s local ad revenue growth has far outstripped Angie’s List’s, mainly due to the growing popularity of its mobile app, the disparity could shift soon, as Angie’s List plans to remove the major barrier to its potential popularity: its paywall.
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