Twitter Looks to Monetize Location, But Is It Cart-Before-Horse?
A few days after Twitter acquired local discovery app, Spindle, last week, news surfaced that the microblogging service was developing a long-awaited geo-targeting product for brands. The developments mark the latest episode in an ongoing saga, in which the two largest social networks — Twitter and Facebook — have briefly flirted with local before pulling back to recalibrate. A hyperlocal ad product is welcome news to advertisers, but Twitter needs to sure it does not neglect the users’ side of the equation…
VIDEO: Making the Economics of Hyperlocal Publishing Work
The once-bright prospects for hyperlocal publishing have dimmed somewhat in recent months, leaving some of the most promising ventures shuttered, bankrupt, or scrambling to save face. During a conversation on stage at Street Fight Summit West in San Francisco earlier this month, Chris Tolles, chief executive of hyperlocal news aggregator Topix, and Sacramento Press co-founder and AdGlue CEO Ben Ilfeld discussed the future of Patch and the long-term sustainability of hyperlocal media at scale…
Street Fight Daily: FTC Reviews Waze Deal, Twitter Developing Hyperlocal Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Google Confirms Antitrust Review of Waze Deal(Wall Street Journal)… Twitter is Developing Geo-Targeted Ads for Retailers (AdAge)… Paton: ‘Bad CEOs and Worse Editors’ Are Trying To ‘Kill Our Future’()…
VIDEO: Why Brands Are Warming to Hyperlocal
For large brands, the upside of local is often shrouded in operational headaches, and overshadowed by the complexities of coordinating a decentralized, and often chaotic, campaign. Thanks to the rapid adoption of mobile devices and new innovations among vendors however, brands’ attitude to local are starting to change…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Reaches 1M Advertisers, Waze Deal May Invite Scrunity
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Facebook Reaches 1 Million Active Advertisers As Small Businesses Adopt (Reuters)… Google’s Effort to Skirt Regulation May Invite More Scrutiny (New York Times)… Groupon Pivots Amid Management Upheaval, Lagging Stock Price (AdAge)…
ReachLocal CEO: Commerce Solutions Becoming Alternatives to Local Search
Whereas most companies have built either a consumer-brand or a back-end for merchants, the company has spun out a SaaS tool, ReachCommerce, from its branded ClubLocal platform. Street Fight recently caught up with Zorik Gordon, ReachLocal’s chief executive, to talk about the origins of the new project, the challenges with bring local services online, and the impact a shift from advertising to commerce might have on local search companies like Yelp…
WPP’s Morrison: Why the Tide Is Turning for Brick-and-Mortar Retail
Gwen Morrison heads up the WPP’s global retail practice, The Store, and works with some of the world’s largest retailers on daily basis to help facilitate the transition to a more connected and empowered local consumer. Street Fight recently caught up with Morrison to talk about the transformation of offline retail, what big retailers are investing in today, and the impact of mobile in emerging markets…
VIDEO: The Pains and Promise of an ‘Amazon’ for Local Services
As investors continue to pour funding into the local services space, the competition over one of the last white spaces of the consumer web is heating up. During a session at Street Fight Summit West earlier this month in San Francisco, Ethan Anderson, founder at booking service MyTime, and Booker CEO Josh McCarter debated the dynamics of building an “Amazon for local services”…
In Rush to Local Services, Thumbtack Nabs $12.5M Series B
The investment dollars keep flowing for companies in the local services space. Two months after scheduling firm Booker nabbed 27.5 million from Bain, Thumbtack, a startup that has built a reverse Craigslist for local services, has raised 12.5 million from Sequoia Capital in a series B round, bringing its total funding to a little over $18 million…
Street Fight Daily: Gannett Buys Belo, Patch Traffic Flat
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Patch has Proved To Be a $200 Million Money-Suck for AOL and Its Traffic Hasn’t Grown In a Year.(Business Insider)… Why Google Bought Waze (Prioleau Advisor)… ComScore: 4 Billion Local Searches in May (Screenwerk)…
With New Products and Integrations, Belly Looks Beyond Loyalty
A year and a half after launch, and Logan LaHive, chief executive of Belly, has a clear message for the competition: we’re winning. The Chicago-based company has rolled out new integrations with Yelp and Facebook this morning, marking the beginning of the company’s push to move beyond loyalty toward an open, social CRM…
Street Fight Daily: Google Buys Waze, UBL Snaps Up Local Incite
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Why Google Wanted Waze: The Local Ad Market Is Going Mobile (AdAge)… UBL Acquires Local Incite – Adds Chicago Presence (UBL)… HP and Google Team Up to Offer Small Businesses “IT in a Box” (AllThingsD)…
A Year After Big Scores by SinglePlatform and Yext, Locu Makes a Quiet Push
It’s been nearly a year since Yext announced a massive round of funding and SinglePlatform sold to Constant Contact within a week each other, and the value proposition for a real-time data and content network continues gain steam. As both firms put that capital to use, a third company, Locu, is trying to carve out its own share of the market with a similar model and sizable — albeit smaller — stack of cash…
The Uber-ization of Local Commerce
Last week, ReachLocal took its new commerce platform for home services, ClubLocal, off of its training wheels, expanding the program into the Bay Area. Pitched as an Uber for home services, the company aims to create a self-service platform to facilitate the booking of home repairs and plumbers — but its execution overlooks some of the dynamics that make some industries, like taxicabs, more fitting to the model than others…
Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Talks ‘Localization,’ Smartphone Adoption Reaches Majority
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Checking Into Foursquare? Yahoo’s CFO Talks About Next Mobile M&A — Including Importance of “Localization.” (AllThingsD)… Pew: 61 Percent In US Now Have Smartphones (MarketingLand)… Yelp Eyes Shopping On Site (SocialTimes)…
With Disparate Data, Factual Founder Sees Opportunity
In a fireside chat with Marketing Evolution CEO Rex Briggs at Street Fight Summit West Tuesday, Gil Elbaz, chief executive at Factual, the location data company, said there’s a massive opportunity for startups to help digest and analyze the massive amount of data coming from mobile devices. The challenge, says Elbaz, is folding additional information into location data to help better understand the context of the user…
Why Marketplaces Fail, and How to Make Them Work in Local
Earlier this spring, Andrei Hagiu, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, published a piece in the Harvard Business Review looking at why marketplaces fail. Based on recent research, Hagiu, and his co-author Julian Wright, broke down the various pitfalls of building a marketplace, concluding that on the continuum between multi-sided platform and reseller, most businesses fell closer to the reseller end of the spectrum…
With the Point-of-Sale, Simple and Open Breeds Success
During a panel at the Street Fight Summit West moderated by Mark Canon of IBID Strategic Consulting on Tuesday, Patrick Gauthier, Head of Product Strategy, Retail Services, PayPal; Square’s strategic partnerships chief Chuck Kimble, and Clover CEO Leonard Speiser took a deep dive into the delicate dynamics of bringing local businesses’ payments into the cloud…
Street Fight Daily: Patch Sees Social Growth, Consumers Warm to Mobile Wallets
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… 29% of Consumers Would Choose a Smartphone Over a Wallet When Going Out (MobileCommerceDaily)… Growing Consumer Interest for In-Store Delivery of Mobile Coupons, Says Study (i2G)…
The NSA’s PRISM Revelations and Hyperlocal Targeting
Hyperlocal companies rely on the data that consumers knowingly share in order to build profiles and serve them with the most relevant information — but would consumers still assent to this sharing if they truly understood everything that is being done with their digital data?