Street Fight Daily: 08.18.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
According to a new report from location-based media company JiWire, 53% of the “on-the-go” U.S. audience is willing to exchange their location in exchange for more relevant content and better information, including mobile deals. (TechCrunch)…
Groupon is running seriously low on cash. The company is not broke, by any means. It can also presumably raise additional capital in the private markets if its IPO gets further delayed. But Groupon’s cash cushion relative to its liabilities is small — and the gap between the two is going the wrong way fast. (Business Insider)…
Datasphere’s Cowan: Hitting the Hyperlocal ‘Sweet Spot’
Street Fight recently spoke with Gary Cowan, Datasphere’s SVP of product and marketing (who will be joining us at the Street Fight Summit in October) about the company’s content strategy, the future of the banner ad, and why his company’s sites aren’t “cookie cutter.”
Street Fight Daily: 08.17.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Mobile location service Localmind lets you use your phone to ask questions of people who are hanging out at a restaurant, bar, park or other venue. With yesterday’s update to the app, Localmind users can now send photos in response to questions, answer questions older than real time and get forwarded all questions for places they are regulars at. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Foursquare has added photos inline with checkins in an update to its iPhone application Tuesday. The new version adds color to the activity stream and refreshes the look and feel of the app. (Mashable)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.16.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Foursquare has launched a new feature that allows users to create distinct lists of the places they’ve checked into or plan to visit in the future. This new functionality brings Foursquare more into the realm of user-generated recommendations long-dominated by review sites such as Yelp. (GigaOm)…
Miguel Ferrer, General Manager of AOL Latino says Patch Latino is set to be introduced this fall and is already hiring journalists in selected markets. “We are not yet commenting on the exact locations of the Patch Latino sites, but yes, they will be in Southern California.” (Portada)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.15.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
AOL is spending about $150,000 to run each individual Patch site annually, according to an analyst’s estimate. AOL first focused on building traffic to Patch sites, and just recently started ramping up ad sales. (Wall Street Journal)…
San Francisco’s KQED is embarking on a couple of partnerships pairing it with hyperlocal sites in the area: one with just-launched Huffington Post San Francisco, the other with four hyperlocal news sites as part of J-Lab’s Networked Journalism Project. (Nieman Lab)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.12.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
An upcoming promotion with RedBox deal seems to go against Foursquare’s whole raison d’être — which is all about getting users out and about. But the new users that result will become increasingly valuable, particularly as Foursquare focuses not just on letting users share where they are now, but to suggest where they should be going. (GigaOm)…
Should investors run screaming from Groupon? Is it an overrated, hyped-up scam? Are we in the middle of another tech bubble? Well, Groupon does seem rather prone to hyperbole, perhaps because its business has proved so worthy of it in its mere months of existence. (Slate)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.11.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Groupon is spending considerable money to acquire subscribers, but those subscribers are buying less Groupons. Groupon is also spending considerable money to acquire merchants but are making less revenue per merchant. That’s not good. (Yipit Blog)…
According to a new survey, it’s not location-relevant advertising that is most valued by mobile consumers; it’s mobile ads that are personalized to a users’ tastes. (Paid Content)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.10.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
SinglePlatform has raised another $3.25 million to launch new products. “If you want to monetize local, you will need to go through SinglePlatform one day, because they’ll own the best, trusted relationship with the merchant,” a confident venture capitalist says. (Business Insider)…
One year after the launch of TBD, the local news project barely exists. Journal Register’s Steve Buttry quietly lifts a glass to his TBD colleagues and shares some lessons for other digital pioneers from his TBD experience. (SteveButtry.com)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.09.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Bloomspot has secured $40 million in new funding. The company focuses on offers from high-quality merchants looking to connect with their best customers and deepen loyalty. The offers they serve are highly tailored for specific interests and demographics. (TechCrunch)…
In its quarterly earnings report, AOL said that Patch has added 44 towns to end Q2 in 846 towns and is on track to have about a 1,000 coverage areas by year’s end. (PaidContent)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.08.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Groupon’s subscribers have more than doubled to 115 million so far this year, according to a person familiar with the situation. Groupon had 50.58 million subscribers at the end of 2010. That jumped 64 percent to 83.1 million at the end of the first quarter. Since then, the number of subscribers has climbed to 115 million, the person said. (Reuters)…
While it may be curious that advertisers, investors, and Foursquare’s ever-growing horde of users continue to maintain faith in the company’s fortunes, this allegiance has almost entirely to do with the enchantments of a single person: founder Dennis Crowley. (Ad Age)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.05.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
“Location is no longer a service like maps or navigation, but increasingly an enabler of new product experiences,” writes Forrester’s Thomas Husson. “In a nutshell, the very notion of location-based services doesn’t not mean much anymore.” (Moco News)…
Mayorships, stickers, badges — these are the rewards new mobile apps confer on us for supplying them with the data of our daily activities. But there’s one potential stumbling block which could stop this gamification going global: the rest of the world might not be as competition-crazy as Americans are. (PaidContent)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.04.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Location-based media company JiWire reports seeing increases in the sharing of and the demand for local deals, like those offered by Groupon, LivingSocial and others, since last quarter. According to data from a recent survey, sharing of deals has increased by 21% and demand is up 20% from Q1 2011. (ReadWriteWeb)…
LivingSocial’s Groupon Now-killer, LivingSocial Instant, appears to now have an ad unit that promotes specific deals. This adds a new layer to how daily deals can be promoted or sold. (Business Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.03.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Foursquare has launched an update that allows anyone to sign up for a brand page that can push tips and check-ins to followers on Foursquare, as well as to Facebook and Twitter. Users had already been able to add new locations to the service, but, until yesterday, there was no good way for most places to actively reach out to users. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Despite the regular carping from pundits on the sidelines, LivingSocial believes it can show that daily deals are a good deal for businesses, and thus a sustainable long term industry. The company has released the results of a recent survey to bolster its argument. (Business Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.02.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Google has snapped up The Dealmap, an aggregator of nearby shopping deals, in an acquisition that furthers its Google Offers ambitions. The purchase, whose price was not disclosed, shows that Google is proceeding even without its unsuccessful $6 billion bid for Groupon last year. (GigaOm)…
The original Yankee Stadium was demolished in 2010, but some of the seats have survived and are now being used in a novel Facebook Places campaign for MasterCard that uses QR codes to establish location. (Mashable)…
Using LBS to Help Merchants Manage Inventory
As mobile becomes a more and more important element in the daily deals equation, it’s becoming clear that there are more potential elements to a location-based deal than your classic Groupon — and more ways for merchants to optimize those deals. Location-based deals platform ThinkNear is one such response to the challenge and opportunity presented by mobile…
Street Fight Daily: 08.01.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Foursquare is looking to cash in on all those check-ins. The company is nearing a decision to start charging the 500,000 registered merchants which access a suite of Foursquare services that are now free, but won’t be forever, the company said. (New York Post)…
More than 91 million US consumers will use the internet through a mobile device at least monthly by the end of this year, and research shows that the increase in on-the-go web usage goes hand in hand with more search activity for local content. (eMarketer)…
Street Fight Daily: 07.29.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Foursquare users in the U.S. and Canada will start to see Groupon’s daily deals in the Explore tab of the application and on Foursquare.com beginning today. Groupon has become Foursquare’s sixth and latest daily deals partner. (Mashable)…
Are targeted local deals services cutting news organizations out of the market that used to keep them afloat, just like Craigslist did to their classifieds? (ReadWriteWeb)…
Street Fight Daily: 07.28.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Google is trying to keep abreast with Groupon in the mobile e-commerce wars and Tuesday released an update to its Google Shopper for iPhone app that appears to be going straight after the daily deals service mobile location push, Groupon Now. (ReadWriteWeb)…
When Groupon filed IPO documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, its use of certain financial accounting metrics raised eyebrows. Now, regulators are prolonging the company’s pre-IPO review over concerns about the metrics, specifically “gross profit” and “consolidated segment operating income.” (PaidContent)…
Street Fight Daily: 07.27.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Groupon has filed for a $10,288,416 offering of equity in connection with its acquisition of Chilean startup Zappedy. However we don’t know if there was cash involved in addition to equity in the Zappedy acquisition so it’s not clear what the final price of the transaction was. (TechCrunch)…
BuyWithMe has announced the launch of their new Android application, which provides merchants with the ability to reach out to mobile consumers with location-based offers. (Daily Deal Media)…
Street Fight Daily: 07.26.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Goshi, a marketplace that aims to disrupt Craigslist by adding a local and mobile component to buying and selling items in your community, debuted its service in Chicago yesterday. Basically, Goshi’s iPhone app allows you to take a photo of an item you want to sell, describe the item, put a price on it and then post it to the marketplace. (TechCrunch)…
Expect plenty of consolidation in the daily deal industry over next year or two. But that isn’t the only change coming to the business. By this time next year, you may be finding the best daily deals via search and social networks rather than email blasts — and you could be redeeming the deals with a swipe of your credit card. (Paid Content)…