Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Acquires Main Street Hub, New York Times Leads Way on Loyalty

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

GoDaddy Is Acquiring Main Street Hub, Social Marketing Platform for SMBs (TechCrunch)
GoDaddy is acquiring Main Street Hub, an Austin-based social media marketing platform. The deal is for $125M in cash plus up to $50M in potential future earn outs, and is expected to close late in Q2 2018.

How The New York Times Uses Interactive Tools to Build Loyalty and Subscriptions (Digiday)
The New York Times’ lofty goal of getting to 10 million subscribers is an all-hands-on-deck mission — involving even its Interactive News desk, the group charged with creating graphs and other interactive elements that support the paper’s long articles.

How Major Brands Are ‘Gamifying’ the Consumer Buying Experience (Street Fight)
Although gamification itself is not a new marketing strategy, advancements in mobile apps and location technologies are providing brands with new opportunities to engage customers using these time-tested techniques. Here’s how six major brands are using gamification to change the consumer experience and promote loyalty.

Here’s Why the Epidemic of Malicious Ads Grew So Much Worse Last Year (Ars Technica)
Last year brought a surge of sketchy online ads to the Internet that tried to trick viewers into installing malicious software.

Snapchat Stories Can Now Live Outside the App (Wired)
If recent trends are any indication, the future of social media lives in Stories—those short bursts of customizable, compilable videos and images that stay online for just 24 hours—and every platform wants to make their version the one you use exclusively.

Programmatic Efficiency Should Focus on Audience, Inventory, Working Media (AdExchanger)
Will Luttrell: For years, programmatic was considered the efficient channel for media buying. And it is, depending on how you define “efficient.”

SoftBank, Not Uber, Is the Real King of Ride-Hailing (Quartz)
Alison Griswold: SoftBank, not Uber, is the real king of ride-hailing. Before its Uber deal, the Japanese tech giant had invested in India’s Ola, Singapore’s Grab, China’s Didi Chuxing, and Brazil’s 99 (acquired earlier in January by Didi).

Facebook Watch Isn’t Very Watchable (Slate)
Inkoo Kang: Given Facebook’s near ubiquity, no other TV or video platform is better positioned to grow via the path of least resistance. Why, then, is Facebook Watch such an ungainly mess? It starts with Watch’s chief insight and premise that discussion ought to be at the center of how we view and discover TV programs.

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