Riding Shotgun in Consumers’ Cars, Apple Could Close the Loop
Earlier this week, General Motors announced plans to integrate iOS devices into its on-dash infotainment system, bringing Apple’s virtual assistant Siri to a handful of its smaller vehicles early next year. Siri integration mixed with maps and a rumored radio product could provide Apple with the necessary footing to make a dent in local advertising and finally turn around its inert iAd network…
Conference Notebook: Yelp ‘Focused,’ Foursquare Denies Slower Growth
It doesn’t look like Yelp has plans to push across the local marketing stack anytime soon. Responding to a question of whether Yelp planned to position itself as a local operating system for local business like Groupon, CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said it was “hard to say what tangential businesses [Yelp would] get into” but “its safe to say we’re focused.”
Wifarer CEO: Indoor Location Is a Multibillion-Dollar Market
Indoor mapping has the potential to become a big business. But it’s early days and big questions are still looming — particularly regarding Apple. Last year the tech giant closed off iOS’ wifi API, the data most companies use to determine a user’s position indoors, dealing a major blow to a number of startups. Street Fight recently caught up with Phillip Stanger, the CEO of indoor mapping startup Wifarer, to discuss why indoor location matters for marketers and how companies can navigate around Apple’s obstruction…
PaperG CEO on the Mobile Opportunity for Small Publishers
For hyperlocal publishers, mobile may or may not be an imminent priority today — but it’s critical that they have a plan for tomorrow. Street Fight caught up with Victor Wong, CEO of local ad tech platform PaperG and former co-chairman of the IAB local committee, to discuss how local publishers can best tackle mobile in 2013…
Local Social Spend Projected to Hit $2.95 Billion by 2016
Local spend on social media in the U.S. is set to jump 1.7x by 2016, according to the Fall Update to BIA/Kelsey’s Social Local Media Forecast. The numbers show a slight reduction in the firm’s earlier projections, which had put the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for local social spend at 28.9%…
Forget Apple vs. Google; a Battle Brews Between Yelp and Foursquare
Foursquare bears tend to ridicule the check-in as a passing fad, but the check-in did two critical things for the company. It provided a mechanism through which the company could build and maintain its own dataset, and more importantly, it served as both an opaque piece of content (“Oh look, my friend checked-in here, it must be good.”) as well as an actionable, and manipulable, piece of data that (unlike content) gains value as inventory scales…
Groupon Bottoms Out as Billings Hit Lowest Level Since IPO
Groupon’s stock hit an all-time low in after-hours trading Thursday after the daily deals company reported lower than expected revenues in Q3, driven largely by stagnant growth in its international business. Overall gross billings, which account for all customer purchases, slid by 6% in Q3 from the previous quarter as gross billings dropped nearly 10% internationally. It’s the second consecutive quarter that Groupon saw its total billings decline…
Street FIght Daily: Yelp Dismisses Google’s Local Content, Google Expands Wallet
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Yelp Not Worried About Google’s “Struggling” Local Content Play (PandoDaily)… Google Wallet Expands To Mobile Web (TechCrunch)… Coupons Boost Starbucks (The Wall Street Journal)…
Lucky Ant Waives Fees, Opens Crowdfunding to SMBs in Wake of Sandy
Many small businesses affected by the wrath of the hurricane will require working capital to make repairs, and the Brooklyn-based Lucky Ant wants to help them raise that money from their communities. The company has waived its fee, allowing any business (in New York or elsewhere) to raise funds for recovery free of charge…
Survey: 91% of Brands to Maintain or Increase Local Spend in 2013
The study also found that while SEO and social media marketing dominated in 2012, more and more brands are looking to invest in new tactics in 2013. While mobile leads the way in terms of new types of marketing, over a third of brands surveyed said they wanted to use online customer reviews (31%) and local blogs (31.5%) in the coming year…
SeeClickFix Partners With HuffPo, Takes On Sandy
In the lead up to the storm, the New Haven-based company hooked up with the Huffington Post and NBC Washington to embed its interactive widget, which is already used by the Journal Register Company as well as smaller hyperlocal sites, into the sites’ storm-tracking coverage. Street Fight caught up with Ben Berkowitz, the co-founder and CEO of SeeClickFix, to talk about why “the crowd” is critical during major events…
Angie’s List Revenue Up 75%; Partners With Square to Integrate Payments
Angie’s List narrowly beat market expectations announcing stronger than expected earnings in Q3, bringing in $42 million in revenue on a $18.5 million loss. That’s a 75% jump in revenue year-over-year. While losses ticked up 6%, the reviews firm showed strong growth among its service provider segment with revenues nearly doubling on a quarter-over-quarter basis…
Why a Renaissance in Local Delivery Points to a Resurgent Main Street
We’re seeing an explosion of activity in the logistics space with a handful of key startups expanding; Walmart piloting a same-day delivery option; and eBay opening its own delivery service, eBay Now. What’s driving the resurgence however, is not the e-commerce framework that sunk Kozmo and continues to hinder Amazon’s efforts. It’s a new push to improve connectivity, and transparency, within existing local marketplaces — not build new ones…
Following Pivot, ThinkNear Finds Buyer in Telenav
A day after Esri snapped up location-technology firm Geoloqi, Telenav has agreed to dish out $22.5 million to acquire ThinkNear, a hyperlocal advertising startup. The TechStars alum will join Telenav’s two year-old mobile advertising group, and form a new platform called Scout Advertising that will serve both the company’s consumer facing mobile application, Scout, as well as other partners…
Geoloqi’s Amber Case on Esri Acquisition: ‘Just Made Sense’
On Monday Esri announced its acquisition of Geoloqi, the makers of back-end location technology solutions for developers, bringing the startup’s real-time location and geocoding support to Esri’s sprawling online mapping product. Geoloqi will continue to serve its existing customer-base as a new Portland, Ore.-based research and development arm of Esri…
Groupon ‘Goods’ Shows Ecommerce Isn’t an Answer to Deals Fatigue
Part of what makes the margin for Groupon’s local commerce business so high is that the marketplace already exists. The supply networks, fulfillment methods, and customer base needed to keep a market running are already in place. Groupon was merely an accelerant — a facilitator of commerce within a given structure. Goods pushed the company into the marketplace business, and the variable risks and liabilities associated with the upkeep of a market…