Street Fight Daily: Facebook Boosts Brick-and-Mortar, Native Google Assistant Integration Coming to Autos

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

Facebook Rolls Out a New ‘Order Food’ Option in its Main Navigation (TechCrunch)
Facebook is now making it easier for you to order food from your favorite restaurants directly within its app, without having to navigate away to a delivery service or restaurant’s own app or website. Recode: What’s next for bots on Facebook Messenger? Maybe helping companies sell.

SMB Content Marketing: Avoid the Backward Approach (Street Fight)
Mindy Weinstein: Whether a business is local or not, content drives the bulk of digital marketing. A successful content marketing campaign involves topics that resonate with the intended audience, creates buzz on social media and attracts high quality links. Yet, the approach that many people take to content marketing is backward.

Google Will Integrate Assistant Directly into Next-Gen Cars (VentureBeat)
Alphabet is promising complete Android integration with your car, including adding Google Assistant. What’s more, a new software update will make all 2016 Ford vehicles compatible with Android Auto and CarPlay. Also, Audi and Volvo are both featuring native integrations of Android Auto in models that could be available as soon as 2018.

Street Culture: Six Vertical Pivoting Its Culture with its Company (Street Fight)
Starting your own tech company often comes with a painful side effect, says Joshua Enders, managing partner of client success at digital commerce company Six Vertical: “It’s an absolute grind. It’s like getting punched in the stomach multiple times a day,” Enders says. “I’m speaking from experience.”

Pittsburgh Welcomed Uber’s Driverless Car Experiment. Not Anymore (NYT)
When Uber picked this former Rust Belt town as the inaugural city for its driverless car experiment, Pittsburgh played the consummate host. Nine months later, Pittsburgh residents and officials say Uber has not lived up to its end of the bargain.

Mobile First to Mobile Always: Create the Right Customer Experience (MediaPost)
Scott Anderson: Mobile is no longer just about the device; it’s a state of being. Now, marketers must refocus mobile strategies around the entire user experience and serve up content that is relevant along every touch point.

How Bustle Is Making Instagram Pay Off (Digiday)
With many advertisers opting for Instagram over Snapchat, Bustle is betting on the photo-driven platform, hoping it’ll pay off with advertisers. By devoting more people to the platform, the millennial women-focused site has added 1.3 million Instagram followers in the past year, for a total of 1.6 million.

It’s Time to Take the Brand Out of Branded Content (AdWeek)
Molly DeWolf Swenson: Taking the brand out of branded content extends beyond just the more commercial web spots. A rising tide of quality has lifted all content ships, and that includes branded content. 

AR Growth Fueled by Snapchat and Facebook (eMarketer)
“Users of Snapchat Lenses comprise the vast majority of our AR estimates,” said eMarketer forecasting analyst Chris Bendtsen. “Snapchat growth will continue to contribute to AR users in the future, but in the next several years eMarketer also expects Facebook Stories to be a significant growth driver of AR usage, since it is now widely available to Facebook’s user base.”

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