BiteHunter Launches In-App Payments for Restaurant Deals
BiteHunter, the year-old dining deals aggregator pitched as a “Kayak for restaurants,” has updated its mobile application with an in-app payment platform and a rehashed user interface. In early March, the company effectively dropped its web offering, focusing its product exclusively on the mobile experience…
Closely Launches Business Intelligence App for Local Merchants
Closely, a Denver-based startup that has created an online marketing dashboard for small businesses, has launched a mobile business intelligence app that aggregates nearby competitors’ deal and social media activity in a live stream. The new product, Perch, which is currently in a closed beta, is intended to give local merchants a snapshot update of their competitors’ marketing activities…
4 Keys to Launching a Location-based Service
What makes launching a location-based app so difficult? In addition to the run-of-the-mill issues that face consumer startups as a whole, location-based services are plagued by the fact that they’re inherently local products, meaning that success has to be geographically relevant. 10,000 users spread across the country are not nearly as valuable as 1,000 users in a single neighborhood…
Swipely Launches Direct Marketing Product Tied to Payments
The company’s new back-end solution brings ecommerce tools to offline stores. The “Main Street Marketing Manager,” which has been running in a closed beta for the past year, enables local merchants to build loyalty and marketing programs on top of their existing credit and debit card processing systems…
Yext Partners With UBL, Begins Push to Scale
The reapproachment between the competitors indicates a substantial shift in strategy for both companies as Yext looks for scale and UBL repositions its brand. UBL appears to be pushing forward with a full-service SEO/listings management product. Conversely, Yext is planting its flag as a technology play…
Conference Notebook: Online Local Market Share to Hit 22% in 2013
After a decade of upheaval, local online advertising revenue is set to exceed local newspaper dollars in 2013. Speaking to a crowd at the Local Online Advertising Conference in New York Wednesday, Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, said that local online advertising’s market share is set to increase to 22% in 2013, exceeding local newspapers revenue by two points.
Placed Snags $3.4M in Funding To Bring Location Analytics to Developers
The location analytics startup emerged from a 13-month stealth period yesterday, announcing Series A funding as well the release of a new product for mobile app developers. Placed for Developers is a free SDK that enables developers of location-aware apps to analyze the real-world context in which their products are being used…
Three Years After Its Launch, Foursquare Works to Become a Business
Three years ago this morning, Foursquare launched what one pundit called its “where-am-I-now app” at SXSW – the name did not stick. Since its launch, the location-based service has attracted over 20 million users and upwards of 750,000 merchants, has outflanked a company worth $94 billion in the location space, and crushed a competitor that was sold to said company for its parts…
CityMaps Releases Mobile App, Wants to Be Kayak for Places Info
After spending three months in a web-only beta, social mapping service CityMaps is making its move to mobile. The New York-based company has released its first mobile app on iOS this morning and has announced its expansion to San Francisco and Austin. The service is essentially a Kayak for local information, aggregating local signals from sites like Yelp, Twitter, and Foursquare as well as commerce companies like OpenTable, Fandango, and handful of daily deal sites…
Sonar Releases Update, Positions for a Fight
The default incumbent in the exploding social discovery space has released a substantial update to its iOS app in time for South by Southwest. The upgrade brings a handful of features that debuted with the launch of its Android app on Tuesday – namely, a shift in its user interface from displaying neighboring venues to nearby people on its launch screen…
Digital First Taps Nimble Commerce to Power National eCommerce
Digital First Media, which oversees the Denver-based MediaNews as well as the New York-based Journal Register Company, has inked a deal with Nimble Commerce to power an ecommerce initiative across the company’s 150 plus local sites. The deal will replace the media group’s largely fragmented ecommerce efforts with a single platform capable of launching daily deal and flash sales campaigns seamlessly across its media properties…
Seamless Rolls Out iPad App, Offers Glimpse into New Strategy
Delivery and takeout service Seamless is rolling out its first iPad app this morning, rounding off an eight-month rebranding process after food-service giant Aramark sold its majority stake in the company to Spectrum Equity Investors for $50 million in June. The application is a debut of sorts for Seamless’ revamped strategy, which aims to position the service farther up the purchase funnel…
LevelUp Expands to 4 More Cities, Doubling Footprint
The mobile payment and loyalty app launched in four new markets today, expanding significantly a little over three months after leaving Beta. The app, a sibling of location-based social discovery app SCVNGR, is now available in Seattle, San Diego, Chicago, and Atlanta, in addition to its launch markets of Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and San Fransisco…
JiWire: 34% of In-Store Consumers Compare Prices on Mobile Devices
“Retailers are becoming increasingly concerned with consumers using their locations as a showroom, then finding the best price on their mobile device and purchasing elsewhere,” David Stass, JiWire’s VP of Marketing, told Street Fight. Meanwhile, only 11% of JiWire’s respondents said that they had used a mobile payments platform like Google Wallet…