Sense360 Launches Developer Platform to Unlock Mobile Sensor Data
Since leaving Telenav last fall, hyperlocal veteran Eli Portnoy has been working hard on a new startup called Sense360, which is looking to analyze data from users’ smartphone sensors to give additional context about where they are and what they’re doing. We caught up with Portnoy recently to talk about the platform, which officially opened to developers this morning…
Street Fight Daily: Tech ‘Bubble’ Speculation, Uber Looks to Go Driverless
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…
Overvalued in Silicon Valley, but Don’t Say ‘Tech Bubble’ (New York Times)…
Uber Hard at Work on Effort to Replace Drivers With Machines (Pando)… How Everyone Gets the ‘Sharing’ Economy Wrong (Wall Street Journal)…
Conference Notebook: Brands Refining Their Local Approach
Multi-location brands that want to connect with local consumers have long been faced with a major conundrum of how much local marketing to trust to their local outlets. At BIA/Kelsey’s National event in Dallas last week, a number of brands and vendors weighed in on how their strategies are evolving…
Location3 CEO: User Profiles From Web Giants Will Refine Ad Targeting
While programmatic advertising is still in its infancy, location targeting on these new platforms is really heating up, says Andrew Beckman. Street Fight recently caught up with Beckman to talk about the value of proximity, the problem of “dirty data” and why leveraging user profiles from Web giants could be the key to attribution…
YP Study Touts the Effectiveness of Its Search Products
Earlier this week, the 100+- year-old company released new research that found adults who use YP to search online are more engaged in several key ways compared to other searchers. Street Fight spoke with YP’s CMO Allison Checchi recently, who said that the company’s deep roots in local search help drive that behavior.
Study: Consumers Increasingly Receptive to Mobile Ads
A new study released by xAd and Telmetrics finds that consumer engagement with mobile ads has increased dramatically over the past few years. Nearly 50% of mobile shoppers said that they found mobile ads informative/helpful — up from 22% in 2013. In addition, nearly half of respondents who clicked on mobile ads said they went on to take secondary actions (like viewing a website or searching for additional information)…
Report: Local Media Ad Revs Will Climb to $158.6B By 2018
Local media ad revenues are set to increase 19% by 2018, according to new figures released by BIA/Kelsey, climbing from $133.2 billion in 2013 to $158.6 billion in 2018. The compound annual growth rate of 3.6% represents faster growth than previously expected, strengthened by political and Olympic advertising. Meanwhile, local digital media is set to continue its increase in market share, increasing from $31.7 billion (23 percent) in 2014 to $52.7 billion (33.2 percent) in 2018…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s ‘Nearby Friends,’ Twitter Debuts App Promo Suite
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… 
Facebook’s “Nearby Friends” Feature Aims for More Offline Connections (Recode)… Twitter’s New Ad Unit Is A Huge, Huge Deal. Here’s Why (Forbes)… Citymapper Just Got Off the Funding Bus and Is Now $10M Richer (VentureBeat)…
Street Fight Daily: LevelUp Eyes ‘Zero Interchange,’ Zuckerberg on Graph Search
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… 
LevelUp Thinks It Has Found A Way To Charge Merchants A 0% Credit Card Processing Fee (Business Insider)… Zuckerberg: Facebook Graph Search Is ‘A Five-Year Thing’ (SearchEngineLand)… Seamless Delivers Tips Agreement (WSJ)…
Street Fight Daily: Twitter Buys Gnip, Google Developing Microcamera Contact Lens
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… 
Twitter Embraces Its Data and Buys Gnip (GigaOm)… Google’s Microcamera Contact Lens Is Coming to an Eyeball Near You (Time)… Seeking Growth, The Payments Industry Embraces New Technologies (TechCrunch)…
MomentFeed Nabs $5.5M in Funding to Scale Social for Multi-location Brands
MomentFeed announced this morning that it has closed a $5.5 million Series A funding round led by Signia Venture Partners. Robert Blatt, who was quietly installed at MomentFeed’s new CEO earlier this year, told Street Fight that the new funding would go toward further scaling MomentFeed’s platform…
Topix CEO: Hyperlocal Companies Are ‘Staying the Course’
The hyperlocal news and community site has continued to chug along, with its user base growing and traffic spiking during the fall 2012 election season. We recently caught up with the company’s CEO Chris Tolles to talk about how the hyperlocal ecosystem is shaking out, how the shift to mobile is affecting publishers’ CPMs, and how Topix is engaging readers with a more moderated discussion…
Setster Launches Scheduling API for Deals Companies
With the ascent of daily deals companies, there has also been a rise of scheduling services that seek to help out local merchants that run the deals and find themselves overwhelmed by the results. Setster, one such appointment-scheduling company, has announced the release of a new API which will give daily deal providers the ability to offer integrated scheduling as part of the marketing package that they give to merchants…
Street Fight Daily: PayPal Targets SMBs, Google Tests AR Glasses
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups. PayPal Targets Small Businesses With All-in-One Tool PayPal Payments (GigaOm) PayPal is organizing its payments products for small business into one larger service called PayPal Payments that is meant to provide an array of tools for online, in-person and mobile payments. The […]
Sizing the Industry: Who Gets Counted as ‘Hyperlocal?’
Since we launched Street Fight in April of last year, one question has come up again and again that we don’t have a very good answer for: “How many hyperlocal news sites are currently operating in the U.S. — and is that number growing? And if it’s growing, how fast is it growing?”