Street Fight Daily: 10.07.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.
Groupon said in a regulatory filing that it plans to “significantly” reduce online marketing spending over time as such investments yield insufficient returns. (Bloomberg)
“AOL’s management may be committed to Patch for now, but the company can’t continue pouring money into an unprofitable entity forever, no matter how much Webster talks about a “long-term” investment,” writes Mathew Ingram. (GigaOm)…
Street Fight Daily: 10.06.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
U.K. regional newspaper publisher Northcliffe Media wants publishers to pay to be part of its hyperlocal network. The group is beginning a “franchise” model, where “franchisees” must pay Northcliffe at least £6,995 ($10810.24) plus VAT to run their own local site. For that, they would get keys to the site, the “ability to sell advertising space” themselves, a “marketing pack” and “handbook” and a whole three days’ training. (Paid Content)…
“It’s not worth trying to be comprehensive” in hyperlocal, writes publisher Richard Jones. “Focus on doing what you’re able to do and do it well, rather than trying to take on the impossible.” (Richard Jones Journalism Blog)…
Street Fight Daily: 10.05.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Apple is launching a new location-sharing feature called Find My Friends, that will allow users to easily share their location with other users. The details are still coming in but users will be able to share their location with friends and find out where their friends and family are in real-time. (GigaOm)…
If enough people buy into Groupon’s IPO, it seems, they all may get a discount, writes Tom Johansmeyer. Of course, this isn’t the goal of the daily deal site, but it could be an unintended consequence. (Business Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: 10.04.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
In the top 30 US markets, no company that reports purchase counts outperformed Groupon in August. In fact, in only 5 markets is the second largest competitor even generating 50% of the gross revenue Groupon generates. (Yipit Blog)…
It was only about six months ago that investor excitement for a Groupon IPO was so high that its expected valuation was $25 billion. Now, institutional investors are wary. A fund manager suggests that Groupon might have to reduce its IPO valuation to between $3 billion and $5 billion in order to get it out the door. (TechCrunch)…
Hyperlocal Publishers Form a Trade Group
A group of 22 local online news organizations have announced that they are forming a trade association. The parameters and potential activity of the association remain largely undefined, but the group includes some of the better-known names in indie hyperlocal publishing, including The Batavian’s Howard Owens, Baristanet’s Debra Gallant, and Oakland Local’s Susan Mernit…
Street Fight Daily: 10.03.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Loopt has been allowed its first patent, and it could be a big one. In layman’s terms, the patent describes using your location to display relevant ads and offers on top of a map, as an interstitial, or as a text ad — another claim also discusses displaying where your friends are on the same map. (TechCrunch)…
A basic contradiction at the heart of the daily deals industry on the Internet has become apparent. Consumers have been told: You will never pay full price again. The merchants were hearing: You are going to get new customers who will stick around and pay full price. Disappointment was inevitable. (New York Times)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.30.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
AOL appears to be preparing us for some kind of neighborhood-based social network built around MapQuest. It has registered a bunch of domains this year that all point to a page that says something called “mqVibe” is coming soon. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Facebook Deals official last day was Sunday, but sources say the company’s withdrawal is not a bad omen for the industry. All of the companies in the space, including newbie Google, are rapidly creating mobile solutions that will recognize when people are close to a deal and allow them to redeem it immediately. (AllThingsD)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.29.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
In an effort to diversify revenue and maintain its rapid growth, Groupon is fast evolving its business model. Recently Groupon deals have gone mobile, real-time, and location aware. Now the company has launched “Groupon Goods,” an ecommerce product that marks the company’s most aggressive departure away from its core daily deal offers. (CNET)…
Daily deals service Signpost is growing its sales force at a rapid pace that could surpass competitors like Groupon and LivingSocial by the end of the year, according to the company’s CEO, Stuart Wall. Signpost employs local contractors, called Deal Scouts, to sign up local businesses for the service. (SocialBeat)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.28.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
New data from Yipit finds that in August each of the industry’s top five deals was from a different category – and all were from Groupon. The top-grossing deal last month was a travel deal from Groupon Getaways, a new category that Groupon entered less than six weeks before. (Yipit Blog)…
Groupon is about to roll out a new product called Groupon Rewards that tries to give merchants a way to increase customer loyalty. With a Groupon Reward, a business that offers a regular Groupon deal will be able to follow up with another reward that gets unlocked after the customer spends a certain amount of money. (TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.27.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
September can’t end soon enough for Groupon. The month brought a string of staff departures, SEC spats and the indefinite shelving of the company’s long-awaited IPO. Now a second class of employees has filed a class action against Groupon over unpaid overtime. (PaidContent)…
Facebook is offering up to $10 million in free advertising to small businesses in the middle of slight changes to how the social networking site allows brands and consumers to interact on its Pages. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.26.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Margo Georgiadis is leaving her job as Groupon’s COO after just five months on the executive team to return to Google, her former employer, as President, Americas. The company has also filed an amended S-1, which includes revised revenue numbers based on a change in accounting. (TechCrunch)…
One self-described “riled” Patch editor from the East Coast says that in addition to his or her normal job responsibilities, this editor has also been asked to start drumming up ad sales leads. (Business Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.23.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Google Offers didn’t do particularly well in August – but the daily deal product radically improved in September. Through just the first three weeks of the month, Google has already surpassed last month’s total revenue of $265k and is on track to more than double this figure by month’s end. (Yipit Blog)…
A source says that AOL is using “smoke and mirrors” trying to get 10 Patch sites profitable by the end of the year. It all has to do with some clever accounting, pushing a bigger chunk of ad dollars from regional campaigns into the target towns at the expense of the rest. (Business Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.22.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
Ad sales chief Scott Colontonio is leaving AOL’s hyperlocal network Patch after little over a year to join Google. Meanwhile, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong reiterated his assertion that some Patch outposts would be profitable by the end of the year. (PaidContent)…
LivingSocial may raise more than $200 million in funding that would give it a valuation of as much as $6 billion, rather than proceeding toward an initial public offering. (Bloomberg)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.21.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Foursquare has just hit one billion checkins. The app had gone from 100 million checkins in July, 2010 to 200 million in Oct 2010 to 750 million checkins in June 2011. Along with the milestone, Foursquare has launched a new version of its app. (TechCrunch)…
HipGeo, a location based social network backed by CitySearch and eHarmony execs, has launched an iPhone app that tracks your travels, then stitches together your photos, comments and pinned locations into an animated diary of each day. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.20.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Amazon Local, the e-retail giant’s recently launched daily deals initiative, apparently does not count the space’s no. 2 player — LivingSocial — as a true competitor. LivingSocial, which received $175 million in funding from Amazon last December, is selling the majority of the ads for Amazon Local — a platform that’s been dramatically expanded in the last seven weeks and now appears in 44 markets. (Clickz)…
Success breeds nothing if not copycats, and few industries have seen more imitators in the last 12 months than the daily deals space. But companies looking for hefty exits might be sobered by a new report on the deals space that notes the price of acquisitions has been plummeting. (Fast Company)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.19.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
The online business of serving up daily deals has attracted millions of dollars in venture capital and spurred dozens of clones of market leaders Groupon Inc. and LivingSocial Inc. Now the industry is starting to shake out. (Wall Street Journal)…
“The national and regional coverage of Hurricane Irene was fine before the storm actually passed through my suburban New Jersey town. But then, what I wanted — and needed — to know came from my local AOL Patch site,” writes Harry Jessell. “The lesson here for broadcasters dabbling in hyperlocal websites or mobile apps is that you can’t do it on the cheap.” (TVNewsCheck)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.16.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
According to Amazon, their Groupon-esque deals service will start displaying bargains on their Special Offer-oriented Kindles when a new software update goes live in coming weeks. (TechCrunch)…
AOL looks like it may be readying a new social network. It’s clear AOL is going for a more localized approach. And what does AOL already own that could be easily integrated with a localized social networking platform? Patch. (Business Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.15.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Groupon is planning to put its initial public offering back on track even as markets remain rocky. After postponing presentations to potential investors early this month, the online coupon giant is now aiming to go public in late October or early November, according to people briefed on the matter. (New York Times/Dealbook)…
Foursquare’s magical tool that will allow developers to build apps that can remind you to buy milk when you walk past the grocery store or notify you when a friend is in the area is being publicly released. (BetaBeat)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.14.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman claims that a 54% traffic growth this year has led the service to 63 million monthly unique visits. 21 million reviews grace the site and the app, and 1 million are being added every 30 days. He also calls Google’s acquisition of Zagat “a funny move. (The Next Web)…
Groupon’s Chinese joint venture Gaopeng is not doing so well. It has apparently closed 10 offices and fired at as many as 400 employees over the past three months. (ReadWriteWeb)…