Street Fight Daily: Lyft Launches Luxury Service, Localytics Integrates with Oracle
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Lyft Launches Premier, Poaches Uber Employees to Get It Running (Business Insider)
Lyft on Thursday unveiled Premier, a new high-end ride-hailing service designed to take a chunk out of Uber’s luxury service. Premier will launch in the Bay Area, New York, and Los Angeles. In the process of ramping up the new service, though, Uber drivers accuse Lyft of adopting a controversial practice of hailing Uber cars to try to recruit and convert drivers to its platform.
Street Culture: Seattle Food Startup Delivers Culture to Chef Partners (Street Fight)
When building trust and loyalty with both customers and employees, the company mission is a backbone often referred back to for consistency and clarity. Food ordering/delivery startups Lish’s three company values are the focus on the customer, quality, and variety, says CEO Aakhil Fardeen.
Localytics Integrates With Oracle for Omnichannel Marketing (MediaPost)
Localytics, a mobile engagement and analytics platform, announced the launch of an application on Oracle’s Marketing AppCloud. The app will allow clients to connect Localytics’ mobile data with Oracle’s Responsys platform and build a unified view of their customer base. Using the two data and tool sets, Responsys users can start driving more targeted campaigns.
Uber Raises $1.15 Billion From First Leveraged Loan (Wall Street Journal)
Uber has raised $1.15 billion from a new high-yield loan, according to a person familiar with the matter, as the ride-hailing company stockpiles cash to ward off regulatory and competitive threats around the world. The new leveraged loan, Uber’s first, brings the amount raised in debt and equity to more than $15 billion and helps its existing shareholder base avoid stock dilution. (Subscription required.)
Lessons for Mobile Marketers from Mary Meeker’s 2016 Internet Trends Report (Street Fight)
Dan Slavin: The report focuses on several trends that should be of interest to retail marketers and their mobile marketing strategies. For starters, there is less differentiation between products, brands, and retailers. These days, products evolve into brands, brands become retailers, and retailers become products.
How 3 Publishers Plan to Use Snapchat Memories (Nieman Lab)
While some said Memories would make Snapchat more addictive and others fretted that it would ruin the app’s spontaneity, the new functionality will also likely change how news organizations use the app. Nieman Lab spoke to journalists and digital innovators at The Hill, Quartz, and NRK to find out how publishers will take advantage of the latest capability on one of the world’s fastest-growing digital platforms.
Kik Launches Way for Brands to go Viral (AdWeek)
Kik is launching a way for users to share chatbots with friends by allowing them to “invite” other users to try out various games, news organizations and brands on the the messaging app. The invite feature, which debuts today, could help chatbots “grow virally” by enabling not only proactive app-store discovery on the part of a given user but also friend-assisted discovery, according to Laura Newton, Kik’s product manager.
U.S. Poll: Mobile News Surges While Newspapers Fall Further (Yahoo)
The portion of Americans who get at least some news on a mobile device rose to 72 percent in 2016 from 54 percent in 2013, Pew said. That included 36 percent who said they “often” get news from a smartphone or tablet. Just 20 percent of adults said they often got news from print newspapers, compared with 27 percent three years earlier.
Facebook’s ‘Friends-First’ Algorithm Tweak May Not Have Hit Yet (Poynter)
Publishers that rely heavily on referral traffic from Facebook had a bad day last week when the social network announced that it was changing its News Feed algorithm to emphasize posts from friends and family over the news. Those concerned about the change should brace themselves, because data indicates that it may not have taken effect yet.
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