With Abraham Out, What’s Next for eBay Local?

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Earlier this week eBay announced that it had parted ways with Jack Abraham, the founder of Milo (which eBay acquired two years ago) and a centerpiece of the web giant’s blistering push into the local space. Abraham’s departure leaves a vacancy at one of the more important positions in the hyperlocal ecosystem and presents questions about the evolving structure of eBay’s off-line commerce efforts….

Street Fight Daily: Intuit’s New Direction, Fousquare’s New Business App

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Intuit’s New Payments Directions In NFC, Passbook And Facebook Revealed In 20+ New Products (TechCrunch)… Foursquare’s New App Is Open for Business (AllThingsD)… Belly Bites is Free Sampling for Local Merchants Done Right (PandoDaily)…

Bringing SMB Point-of-Sale Systems to the Cloud

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The introduction of SaaS POS has broad implications, not only for payment firms like Square, but also a host of other loyalty and lead generation start-ups that have worked to tie into the point of sale over the past 18 months. It brings scalable access to real-time data on nearly every inch of local retailers’ operations, not only accelerating existing sectors like loyalty and rewards but opening new opportunities for key services like live inventory search…

Street Fight Daily: Group Commerce Layoffs, Mayer Talks Location

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Group Commerce Has Laid Off 28% Of Its Staff (Business Insider)… Is Foursquare on Marissa Mayer’s Silicon Alley Shopping List? (BetaBeat)… Keith Rabois Talks About Sexual Harassment Claim, Becoming a “Distraction” at Square and What’s Next (AllThingsD)…

Can Foursquare Get Its Mojo Back by Embracing ‘Passive’ Check-Ins?

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Does Foursquare need to be “fun” anymore? I’d say no. “Fun” means fighting an ever-diminishing battle over consumer mindshare on mobile — a fight Foursquare is losing. It’s also contrary to what Foursquare is trying to build with its Explore functionality…

#SFSNYC: Jim Brady on Building Engagement and ‘Stacking Digital Dimes’

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The TBD vet and Digital First Media editor-in-chief says that hyperlocal media must fill two roles for the reader. It has to be a water cooler — a place where people come to engage with news in a community — and an ATM, a utility connecting readers with actionable information.

#SFSNYC: Think Context Not Platforms, Says Google’s Tim Reis

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While 2012 was mobile’s breakout year, Tim Reis, head of mobile and social solutions at Google, urged marketers to move this year beyond platforms and instead focus on context during a morning keynote at the Street Fight Summit on Wednesday. “Consumers are very comfortable across [multiple] platforms; they don’t silo these activities,” said Reis…

Street Fight Daily: PayPal Expands In-Store, Hyperlocal Media Defended

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.PayPal Adds New Retailers For In-Store Payments Product; Tests Order-Ahead Pickup At Jamba Juice (TechCrunch)… Hyperlocal is Deserving of Its Hype (The Guardian)… Scoutmob Finds Surprise Success with Etsy Competitor Shoppe (PandoDaily)…

PayPal Media Network’s Doyle on eBay’s Local Push and ‘Closing the Loop’

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Walt Doyle, who was CEO of Where at its acquisition, now serves as general manager of PayPal Media Network. Street Fight caught up with Doyle recently to talk about “closing the loop,” building a local marketplace, and rethinking advertising’s role in the hyperlocal space.

Street Fights of 2012: Making Sense of Content Economics

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Hyperlocal media continued to wrestle with the economics of content, as some of the most promising concepts of years past were put to the test in 2012. The Journatic scandal revealed the ethical quicksand that can accompany innovation. Meanwhile, the iterations at Patch reaffirmed that original local journalism produced by professional journalists is difficult to scale…

Street Fights of 2012: The Battle Over SMB CRM

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After two years of watching siloed firms like Groupon explode, 2012 saw a shift in how companies approached the hyperlocal market. Business-to-business plays, particularly in the marketing space, emerged as a more efficient alternative to the early pioneers…

Street Fights of 2012: The Mobile Search for Local Discovery

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So 2012 was mobile’s debutant year, with it introduced to society at large but still very much in the process of growing up. For local search, that meant mobile queries jumped by nearly 56% while desktop growth slowed to a little more than 12% in 2012…

Native Advertising Could Spell Trouble for Foursquare With Brands

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Given that Foursquare’s user base isn’t going to get as big as Facebook’s or Twitter’s (which is not necessarily a bad thing) and considering the pressure to justify its valuation, putting too much faith in a native ad model could potentially spell trouble for the company…

A Street Fight Brews in Europe Over Hyperlocal Info

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Legacy yellow pages providers, domestic start-ups, and American powerhouses like Yelp are vying for the still wide-open European market. Street Fight caught up with 1001 Menus CEO Xavier Zeitoun to discuss the hyperlocal ecosystem on the continent, as well as some of the roadblocks for American companies looking to expand…

Street Fight Daily: Apple Maps ‘Life Threatening,’ Starbucks App for All

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Apple Redraws Maps After Australian Drivers Led Astray in the Bush (The Guardian)… Starbucks Mobile Vets Get $10M for Cardfree Mobile Payments Tool (GigaOm)… Eight Great Location-based Mobile Campaigns from 2012 (Econsultancy)…

What Would a Groupon Acquisition Mean for Google?

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Groupon’s stock price soared Friday on speculation that Google, its onetime suitor, might make an offer for the troubled local commerce firm. It’s unfounded speculation, but an interesting thought experiment nonetheless: How could Google leverage Groupon’s assets to solidify its local commerce offerings?

Patch Adds COO as Leadership Change Continues

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AOL’s Patch network of hyperlocal news sites has made yet another significant change at the top, naming former Westwood One operations head Steve Kalin to the newly created position of president and COO. Kalin will take responsibility for the company’s daily operations — with the advertising, finance, marketing and content functions all reporting to him…

Street FIght Daily: AT&T Launches Alerts, Foursquare’s 10.4M Users

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.AT&T Launches AT&T Alerts, A Location-Based Deal Alert Service, As The Field Grows More Crowded (TechCrunch)… Foursquare Has 10.4 Million Monthly Users (AdWeek)… Groupon’s Restaurant Tools Get A VP Of Sales (Fast Company)…

Conference Notebook: Commerce and Content Collide

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Selling stuff makes most editorial folks uneasy. But as the price of online (not to mention mobile) advertising inventory drops, online shops, affiliate programs, and daily deals are becoming a key revenue strategy for local and national publishers…

Using Contextual Awareness, Qualcomm Labs Targets Tokyo

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Dentsu has teamed up with Recruit Co. and Qualcomm Labs to create a massive location-based marketing campaign in Tokyo. The campaign builds upon a technology provider’s newly released contextual-awareness software development kit, Gimbal, to dynamically distribute offers to consumers by synthesizing a user’s location and social graph without draining battery life…