Antengo CEO: Why Local Classifieds Need to Go Mobile

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Antengo is a local marketplace app that allows users and businesses in a city to post classifieds and engage in local, mobile-driven commerce. The app, which is trying to increase and simplify commerce on a local level, just re-designed their app, hoping to expand mobile on-the-go behavior to tablets. Street Fight talked to Founder and CEO Marcus Wandell about how Antengo is changing local commerce, the role of the tablet for location-based apps, and more.

Local Corp. Survey: SMBs ‘Cautiously Optimistic’

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A new survey released by Local Corporation has found that 92% of small business owners are influenced by the national economy. In recent months, 46% have considered raising prices, while 40% have considered cutting back on marketing. Local Corporation CEO Heath Clarke says the uncertain economic climate has focused SMBs on getting the most ROI for their marketing dollars.

User Friendly Media Acquires App Express

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User Friendly Media has acquired App Express, a mobile app builder for SMB’s. The two companies have had a reseller partnership since March, and the App Express mobile platform will now be available to all of UFM’s SMB customers…

Postmates CEO: Online and Offline Commerce Will ‘Melt Into One’

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“We give our consumers what can be seen as a remote control that allows them to browse the inventory of a city, buy an item, and have that item delivered in under an hour,” says CEO Bastian Lehmann. “Whatever Fedex does on the global level, we want to be able to do that on a micro-urban level.”

Sense CEO: SMBs Must Reach Consumers at Decision-Making Points

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“The mobile experience is a very personal interaction with the consumer.” says Sense Networks CEO David Petersen. “It’s one that you can interact with consumers and lots of times, when they’re on the go. I think it’s less formal than online. I think it’s a great medium for connecting with consumers and I think today it’s also exceptionally cheap.”

Broadcastr’s Lindenbaum on ‘Putting the Web Back Into the World’

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“The expectation for discovery of content is one that continues to rise,” says the company’s co-founder. “At a certain point people are expecting content that is perfect for them to just already be there for them. So, the more factors we can take into consideration in order to deliver on those expectations, the better we’re going to be. Location is one of those things”

PaperG Survey Highlights Rising Importance of Mobile

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A new survey released by local advertising technology company PaperG highlights the clear, continuing indication that mobile advertising is becoming increasingly important to media buyers. In the survey of 512 ad sales executives, 94% said their prospective clients are interested in mobile advertising. Meanwhile, 90% were optimistic about the prospects of mobile display ads…

Study: Mobile Searches Driven By Location, Urgency

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“Whether it’s location or indicators of location, those are probably the most important factors here,” Telmetrics President Bill Dinan said. “Where you have 3 out of 5 users going into restaurants without a specific restaurant or specific brand in mind, they are looking for something in the category near them.”

LBS Evzdrop Wants to Deepen SMB Relationships With Consumers

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The location-based service is trying to to help businesses use its user-generated data to interact and build relationships with consumers. Street Fight recently caught up with the company’s CEO, David Rush, to talk about the value of real-time data to businesses, how they can better use location for marketing and more…

MinnPost CEO: ‘Go After Every Stream of Revenue That You Can Think Of’

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With five years under its belt, Minnesota- and Twin Cities-centric local site MinnPost has a non-profit model that seems to be working well. The site combines advertising, donations and sponsorships to support its journalism, and it ended 2011 with a slight budget surplus for the second year in a row. Veteran newsman Joel Kramer, the site’s CEO, spoke with Street Fight recently about the importance of not relying on just one revenue model, and about how to treat local news sites like the businesses they are — matching ambitions with the available potential revenue in a given market.

Cont3nt Connects Local Publishers With Freelance Multimedia Journalists

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The explosion of mobile content creation and sharing has enabled citizen journalists all over the world to upload and broadcast news immediately, wherever it’s happening. But folks on the ground at a news event rarely get paid for their reporting. Cont3nt, a new wire-service of sorts, is hoping to supply publications with relevant place-based images and videos by connecting them directly with freelance journalists…

MapQuest Tries Its Hand at Social Discovery With mqVibe

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The newish social mapping project debuted by MapQuest last October has been trying to create a neighborhood-centric “discovery” engine. The service launched in 50,000 neighborhoods across the U.S. and uses social media information about an area to generate a score for these neighborhoods.

Banjo CEO: Location Is Key for Social Apps

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Banjo, one of a number of fast-growing location-based social apps, recently reached one million users just nine months after its launch. The company’s founder, Damien Patton, talked to Street Fight recently about the impact of location technology, how advertising is evolving with social media, and the future of location-based social networks…

EveryBlock Updates App to Facilitate Mobile Sharing of Local News

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Brian Addison, the company’s president, said the revamped app allows for “the sharing of news with neighbors as it unfolds.” He says that apps like Everyblock’s “help publishers stay top of mind with their audience. We’ve reached a point where having your logo occupy a prominent place on a user’s second screen is the linchpin for loyalty.”

Card-Connected Loyalty Service LocalBonus Expands Reach

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New York-based customer loyalty startup LocalBonus is expanding to four new cities: Seattle, Portland, Sacramento and Denver. The company has also announced that it has raised more than $500,000 in a seed funding round from Payment Ventures, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, and other angels…

Study: Less Than 20% of SMB Web Sites Link to Social Media

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SMB DigitalScape analyzed the web sites of over 1 million small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) from around the world — including more than 700,000 U.S. companies — and found that only 19.5 percent of SMB sites link to their Facebook page, and an even small percentage link to Twitter and other sites…

Weekly News Recap: Patch’s Editor-In-Chief Steps Down

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AOL’s much-discussed hyperlocal network Patch is in the midst of changes at the top of its masthead. Editor-in-Chief Brian Farnham, who had been with the company for four years, announced during a conference call this week that he would be leaving. Here’s a look at some of the coverage of Farnham’s departure.

Talk About Local’s Hartley: U.K. Hyperlocals Looking for Scale

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The U.K. has been a rich testing ground for hyperlocal content plays over the past few years. But British projects have taken a slightly different flavor than we’re used to here in the U.S., says Sarah Hartley, a veteran journalist who has been involved in some notable stabs at conquering the local space..

News Recap: Groupon’s Financial Troubles

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Groupon took flak this week after the daily deals giant restated its fourth quarter earnings and cited inadequate resources allocated for refunds. In the wake of the restatement, the recently public company’s stock price plummeted, the SEC initiated a probe into its business practices, and it was hit with a stockholder’s lawsuit. Here’s a look back at some of the coverage of Groupon’s troubling week…

Deals Site Privy Launches, Giving Merchants More Control

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The Boston-based deals start-up is hoping to change the way small businesses use daily deals by giving them more control over distribution and promotion. The company allows SMBs to create and manage their offers, and helps them market through the business’s online networks — to Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and visitors to their website. ..