With Perfect Information, Does ‘Awareness’ Becomes Obsolete?
In a world in which information is finite and often inaccessible, the ability for a business to be top of mind — to carve out a little spot in a consumer’s memory — was a powerful competitive advantage, and one that drove the way businesses sold goods and services to local consumers. But thanks to the rapid adoptions of mobile devices by consumers and the emergence of inexpensive cloud-based operations software, that’s changing…
Citi Global Head: NFC Will Win Out By End of 2014
Near field communication (NFC), the much-maligned technology that once was held as the future of mobile payments, may not be dead yet. Richard Char, global head of digital networks and merchant Services at Citi, believes that two emerging trends will turn the tide for NFC, dissolving many of the infrastructural barriers that have mired its growth…
Street Fight Daily: Square Valuation Hits $5B, NFC’s Continued Decline
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Square Valuation Rises to $5bn (Financial Times)… Au Revoir NFC? Carrier Bouygues Reportedly Cools on Contactless Payments (GigaOm)… What Secrets Your Phone Is Sharing About You (Wall Street Journal)…
The Real World Is on the Verge of Its Own Data Revolution
With nearly 9 billion devices connecting to the web today, the malls and main streets where consumers still spend 90% of their income are on the verge of their own data revolution. A world of connected devices — from smartphones and tablets to wi-fi routers and bluetooth beacons — are measuring the comings and goings of buyers and sellers locally, creating a new dataset that businesses, consumers and technology companies can use to create a better, more efficient local marketplace…
Placed CEO: In the Real World, It’s People — Not Places — That Matter
There’s a broader effort in the technology community to chart consumer behavior in the real-world, using mobile devices to measure movement throughout the the world as marketers use cookies trace users as the browse the web. Street Fight recently caught up with David Shim, the chief executive at Placed, to discuss the ins and out of charting consumer behavior in the real-world…
With Privacy Debate in Rear View, Euclid Looks to Make Offline Analytics Mainstream
The clamor that erupted last year after the Wall Street Journal and other mainstream outlets reported that some big retailers passively tracked users in their stores has waned in recent months, opening the door for an emergent offline analytics sector to become a mainstay retail industry. Euclid, the company that quickly became the poster-child for in-store tracking during the debate, is making its core tracking technology free this morning in an attempt to lure in the millions of smaller, more apprehensive retailers across the country…
Nomi Adds In-store Messaging to Offline Measurement
The New York-based startup is moving deeper into the proximity marketing business by adding in-store messaging capabilities to its existing measurement and analytics products. The proximity marketing product, Nomi Mobile, uses a Bluetooth LE beacon to enable retailers to send notifications, rewards, and other messaging to customers on their existing mobile applications as they walk through the store…
Esri’s Amber Case: Why ‘Less Is More’ With Local Data
As far as technologists are concerned, few in the industry are more familiar with the nuts and bolts of how location data is made than Amber Case. A self-proclaimed “cyborg anthropologist,” she sold her startup Geoloqi, which built positioning algorithms for developers, to Esri last year, and today, she heads up the 45-year-old mapping firm’s R&D center. Street Fight recently caught up with Case to discuss what we might expect from location data in the years to come…
Hyperlocal M&A in 2014 — Here’s What the Big Acquirers Are Looking For
YP’s acquisition of Sense Networks earlier this week comes as M&A activity in the local technology continues to increase, with the market seeing the number of large, double digit deals increase in 2013. Here’s a quick look at several major players who may currently be in the hunt for locally focused acquisitions and what they might be looking for.
Street Fight Daily: YP Buys Sense Networks, Taskrabbit Delivers Cold Medicine
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… YP, a Mobile Search Firm, Buys Sense Networks (New York Times)… Walgreens Taps TaskRabbit to Deliver Cold Medicine to Shut-Ins (Mashable)… Facebook WiFi Comes to Some Netgear Routers, Allowing Small Businesses to Offer Free WiFi access (The Next Web)…
Why HouseCall Thinks Taxi Apps Are Just The Tip Of The Iceberg
Last year, four engineers from Qualcomm, who were responsible for the company’s location sensor product Gimbal, left the company to start HouseCall, a system that helps users find and book local providers who service home-related projects like plumbing or audio/visual installation. The company has built a similar marketplace model as Seamless in the food delivery sector, providing enterprise software for free to merchants and then selling leads generated by its consumer product…
Street Fight Hosted Three Events in 2013 — Here’s What to Remember
Street Fight hosted three events in 2013, two in New York during the winter (thanks to Hurricane Sandy) and fall, and another in San Francisco in late spring. The programming for the events, and the stories flowing out of them, reflect the continued transformation of the local marketing industry and the emergence of a new, technology-driven local ecosystem. With the year coming to a close, here is a look back at the biggest stories that came out of Street Fight’s Annual Summits…
There’s a New ‘Local’ Industry in the Making
Call it local media, marketing, or commerce — but the existing terminology and classifications used to describe the “local” industry simply do not fit anymore. What’s emerged in 2013 is a community of technology companies, organized around the idea of creating a better, more connected local marketplace…
When Will Big Retail Rethink Point-of-Sale? Sooner Than You Think
Revel Systems wants to bring the tablet-based point-of-sale model upstream and disrupt the entrenched cadre of existing business software providers, which generated billions in revenue last year. Revel’s founder Lisa Falzone, a Stanford grad and one-time hedge funder, spun the company out of an online ordering app in 2010. Since then, Falzone and her team have raised over $14 million in venture funding, and have activated over 5,000 accounts…
DemandForce CMO: There’s No Limit to Where We Will Want to Go
If Google’s acquisition of Waze was the biggest exit in local tech over the past few years, Intuit’s buy of Demandforce was arguably the most important. Since shelling out nearly half of a billion dollars for the retention marketing software provider, the company has quietly executed on a strategy to position itself an integrated solutions provider for small businesses…
How Yahoo and Intuit Plan to Win With Small Businesses
Major companies have started to turn their gaze to the small business market, looking to cash in on a segment that has long eluded some of technology ‘s biggest players. During Interactive Local Media in San Francisco Wednesday, two Web 1.0 giants – Intuit and Yahoo – laid out their strategies to position themselves as the go-to source for small business software…
Conference Notebook: The Future of Local Is the Marketplace, Not the Message
The local market has seen a seemingly endless flood of startups come online over the past few years, with many building the next iteration of last year’s feature. But as the market matures, and later-stage startups look to expand their addressable markets, the industry is starting to coalesce. According to data presented at the Interactive Local Media conference in San Francisco Tuesday, the number of M&A deals jumped by 65% this year thanks to strong performance online, but explosive growth in mobile…