A New Phase for Street Fight
After seven years of total obsession with the digital and mobile disruption that has taken place in local marketing, I have decided to step down from my position as Street Fight’s CEO. Creating and growing this business has been extremely rewarding, and I write this post as a huge thank you.
The Local Conference You Don’t Want to Miss
It’s that time of year again when the most exciting companies in local gather in New York City to hash through and celebrate the best ideas and strategies. Street Fight Summit is coming next Thursday and Friday to TriBeCa, and one of the themes we’re focusing on this year is partnerships. Partnerships are a key reason we have been bringing people together for the last few years, but never have they been such a high-profile, essential element of success as they have become over the past year…
More Hyperlocal Investment Content Coming to Street Fight
Over the last six months, our Hyperlocal Investment Report newsletter has aimed to guide investors through this new industry, to give context and insight into the market potential of pre-public companies, and to synthesize activity in the public markets as well as in private placement, venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, private equity and the like. With this issue, we’re moving it from a paid product to delivering this content on our public website for free, to engage in broader discussion around key issues in hyperlocal investing.
Why Don Draper Would Hate Hyperlocal
Many brands are still stuck in the days of Don Draper, failing to see that the potential for a lasting bond is even greater with hyperlocal (and delivers better ROI). Campaigns on services like LevelUp, LivingSocial or Tackable have more resonance precisely because they are tied to where you are. They tap into your good feelings around, say, your favorite pizza place, a connection that doesn’t require the same kind of shaping by big media or advertising mavens.
Hyperlocal in 2012: More Consolidation and Scale, Less ‘Free’
What it comes down to is that hyperlocal companies like Foursquare and Groupon, despite their “hyperlocal” raison d’etre, need scale to bring an effective proposition to merchants and big brands. Scale helps, even if that just means a larger audience within a metro area or even a single neighborhood…
Local Quotables: Seth Priebatsch, Chris Dixon, Dan Street and more…
Chris Dixon sends kudos to Foursquare’s latest release; Seth Priebatsch gets excited about the evolution of money as it moves further online; Steve Buttry gets an endorsement; Josh Fenton talks hyperlocal publishing success; and Dan Street describes the evolution of local as “not a search problem.”
Sponsored Post: Free Tickets to Social Media Analytics Conference
Business Insider is giving away 5 free tickets to the VentureBeat community for their Social Media Analytics conference, the place to learn how to measure your social-media impact and generate ROI.
Loopt: Re-Energizing the Deal Business
Our pick in this week’s Street Smart Moves is Loopt. Daily deals is a hackneyed formula already, but Loopt is trying to bring some innovation to the fore by letting consumers pick their own deals. What Loopt is doing is almost exactly the answer to John Wannamaker’s famous quote about not knowing which half of his advertising worked (but knowing half did): By letting consumers suggest the items they want deals on, merchants will know what will sell.
Surveys All Say: Hyperlocal’s Taking Over Ad Spending. Duh.
A new survey released this week by the hyperlocal network Topix says what is increasingly clear in every new data that emerges: ad dollars are shifting to local, and of that, most are going online. The Topix survey of ad agencies found 90% said they are buying more local ads (“geographically-targeted”) than they ever have.
Edmunds’ Drive for a Daily Deal
The single-best deal, assertion, investment or other strategy this week…
Who: Edmunds…
Why: For its bid to play in daily deals for cars…
“It helps automakers and dealers who have excess inventory or oversupply of specific models, or have a need to get rid of the past model-year vehicles through additional discounts. So it is intended to be very targeted to areas that need that focused conversation around certain vehicles.” — Michelle Denogean, VP of business operations at Edmunds.com…
Street Fight Daily: 06.09.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… One Patch salesperson – candidly self-described as a “disgruntled employee” — said that”people in the sales teams that are successful have to sell the product to an ignorant lot of small business owners that can’t differentiate between branding and performance-driving results. When it gets down to paying the editors, paying the sales staff, paying the management and the requisite expenses that go along with that, the numbers just do not compute.” (Business Insider)… A new forecast from eMarketer puts online ad spending at $31.3 billion this year, up 20 percent. That is double the 10.5 percent growth rate it put out last December for 2011. The new forecast shows online ad spending reaching nearly $50 billion in 2015. (TechCrunch)…
Main Street’s Need for Speed
The single-best deal, assertion, investment or other strategy this week.
Who: Main Street Connect
Why: For its plan to scale up to 6,000 hyperlocal sites across the country in a few short years
Advertisers typically want to reach more than a single town. If independent community news site proprietors are making good dough, why aren’t they propagating, sharing their news prowess with neighbor towns? That’s what we’ll be doing with our profits — reinvest, reinvest, reinvest, so our products and processes get more and more excellent.. — Carll Tucker, Main Street Connect CEO…
Groupon to Go Public — And Then Where?
The point of the company that eventually became Groupon was initially to inspire group action around a political or social cause. It was called ThePoint.
The point of Groupon… well, that may yet to be determined. The company, which filed an S-1 today with the Securities & Exchange Commission for a $750 million initial public offering, is known as a group-buying firm offering deep discounts on everything from hair removal to horse rides, complete with clever copy in each offer. It has seen a meteoric rise in revenue, earning $644 million in the first quarter of 2011 alone, up from $713.3 million in all of 2010. It has 83 million subscribers across 43 countries. And, as CEO Andrew Mason revealed this week at AllThingsD’s D9 conference, about half of its 8,000 workforce is in sales. Groupon has some serious feet on the streets…
Relocations: 05.27.11
Comings and goings in hyperlocal.
Yatown, a hyperlocal social network, has named Yahoo Search senior vice president Tuoc Luong to its board. … Hyperlocal marketing agency Geomentum had some moves this week: Todd Curry becomes chief digital officer. He was previously founder and managing director of trading desk Accuen Media. Lisa Bradner has been upped to chief client services and growth officer from president. (Bradner spoke recently with Street Fight about the need for scale.) … Former San Diego Union-Tribune executive Matt Chaney has joined Second Street, a provider of white-label daily deals platforms for local companies, as director of affiliate deals success. … In a return to an old position, Michael Sawtell became COO of Local.com, a position he held there from 2000 to 2005, after the departure of Bruce Crair.
Send job announcements to [email protected].
Groupon and Foursquare: A Happy Combo
The single-best deal, assertion, investment or other strategy this week.
Who: Groupon and Foursquare
Why: For considering a partnership that ties check-ins to daily deals
Daily deals leader Groupon and social location innovator Foursquare are in partnership talks, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The arrangement is likely to see Groupon deals targeted to Foursquare users’ check-ins. Mobile app users who tell their friends that they’re in the vicinity of a venue offering a discount are obviously prime customers...
Relocations: 05.20.11
Comings and goings in hyperlocal.
TroopSwap, a website focused on daily deals for the military, has named a new board director along with a $585,000 funding round: Kelly Perdew, CEO of FastGames and a former Army Ranger. … Hyperlocal ad sales talent wanted: by virtually everyone. DNAInfo, the Manhattan hyperlocal publishing company, is among them. … Journal Register hires another former TBD.com staffer, naming Steve Buttry engagement director, joining former TBD general manager Jim Brady, hired in March. …. Merrill Brown joins Main Street Connect as strategic adviser and Jack Schofield has been named publisher of MSC-Massachusetts as part of Main Street’s acquisition of his site CentralMassNews.com. …
Send job announcements to [email protected].
What We Mean When We Talk About ‘Hyperlocal’
When we launched Street Fight, we expanded the term “hyperlocal” from its traditional use pertaining only to passionate, driven, highly local publishers who were the first to act on the erosion of local media’s business. We have applied it to include anyone who is disrupting and taking market share from traditional media and offering local businesses new ways to reach consumers…