Street Fight Daily: Apple Manufacturing ‘Smart Home’ Speaker, Blue Apron Files for IPO

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

For Smart Home Speakers, a Possible New Competitor (eMarketer)
Apple is reportedly manufacturing a smart-home speaker that will compete with Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home. The manufacturing giant is expected to debut the new speaker at its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference 2017 next week.

Are Website Builders the Next Big Growth Market in Local? (Street Fight)
Mark Macleod: Website builders have been around almost as long as the internet itself.  As you would expect, this is a busy market. Sitebuilderreport.com tracks 35 vendors. There are many more. Interestingly, only 4 of the 35 vendors get a good rating. Clearly, this is a large market that is ready for new and better solutions.

Blue Apron Delivers $100 Million IPO Filing (VentureBeat)
Blue Apron, the dinner-in-a-box company that delivers pre-measured ingredients to home chefs, filed for an initial public offering this afternoon, seeking to raise as much as $100 million to compete in the competitive food-delivery space. Recode: Blue Apron’s post-IPO challenge: making more money from existing customers.

SMB Index: Local Stocks Up 5.4% in May (Street Fight)
The SCP SMB Index climbed 5.4% in May. The Nasdaq was up 2.6%, while the S&P 500 was up 1%, and Dow Jones was flat, gaining 0.2%. Four of the top five constituents in the index continued to experience stock price gains after April, which saw all five companies gain in value.

Uber Says It Just Noticed Error on Pay, But It Was No Secret (NYT)
Evidence has emerged suggesting that Uber and New York State regulators were aware of the improper deductions from drivers’ earnings as early as 2015.

Yext Passes Its First Test as a Publicly Traded Company (TechCrunch)
Yext’s first earnings report as a publicly traded company seems to be a boringly pleasant one — but that’s a good thing for a company that needs to show strong performance out of the gate.

Raise Report: DemandBase, G2 Crowd, People.ai Score New Funding (Street Fight)
Every two weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes funding for Frichti, Bulletin, StreamSets, and Julie Desk.

Proof: Influencer Content Can Increase Foot Traffic (MediaPost)
48% of the exposed group visited the retailer within four days versus only 29% in the identical, but unexposed, control group. The positive store conversion rate of 18.2% for the test vs. control affirmed that influencer campaigns can impact in-store traffic when implemented alongside audience pixel data.

Google Will Help Publishers Prepare for Chrome Ad Blocker Coming Next Year (WSJ)
Google has told publishers it will give them at least six months to prepare for a new ad-blocking tool the company is planning to introduce in its Chrome web browser next year, according to people familiar with the company’s plans.

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