Street Fight Daily: Google Measures “Store Visits,” Square Resurrects Wallet

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Google’s Making It Easier to Figure Out if Online Ads Actually Drive In-Store Traffic (AdWeek)… Square Is Resurrecting Wallet, Its Pay-By-Name Mobile App, And Giving It Away (ReadWrite)… Can Wal-Mart Clerks Ship as Fast as Amazon Robots? (Wall Street Journal)…

Twitter and Foursquare Make a Better Match Than You’d Think

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Reports surfaced yesterday that Twitter may partner with Foursquare to help the microblogging service develop a new local discovery feature. In the perennial speculation about Foursquare’s future, the rumors lead us to ask: would a Twitter tie-up make sense?

With New Dashboards, Factual Puts a Face on Its Data

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Factual is making a bigger push into the media business. The data company has released a new self-service tool to allow agencies, publishers and demand-side platforms to segment and build audiences using the company’s location analytics toolset…

Serviz CEO: Uber-like Service Providers Will Begin to Displace Local Search

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The on-demand service spun out from ReachLocal has snagged another $12.5 million in funding to expand beyond Los Angeles, adding to $2.5 million raised earlier this year. We spoke with CEO Zorik Gordon to talk about the investment climate for local commerce and the implications of these innovations for the local search community…

Can Mobile Help TV Networks Track In-Store Visits? PlaceIQ Thinks So

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Among the various media, television has remained relatively unaffected by the Internet. Marketers still spend billions on television advertising, and brands expect little measurement or performance in return. But that’s changing, and the big advertisers — often, the large retailers who sell mostly offline — now increasingly want proof of value…

New Report Suggests Brands Remain Ambivalent About Local Search

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A new Forrester report suggests that a large swath of national marketers still struggle to understand the role of local search in a national marketing strategy. The complexity of the local search industry, the report argues, has created unnecessary barriers for large marketers to invest in both paid and organic search initiatives…

At Square, Growth is Good — At Least It Could Be

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In an interview with the New York Times, Jack Dorsey said the company has never “been in any talks about an acquisition with anybody for our nearly six years as an idea and over five years as a company.” He also rejected rumors that the firm was under duress financially…

Apple and IBM Release New Retail Apps

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Last summer, Apple and IBM announced a partnership to develop hundreds of new business applications exclusively for iOS devices. The fruits of the partnership, which were released this morning, include a handful of productivity and sales applications that could compete with a thriving category of startups selling software to brick-and-mortar retailers…

Why Pat Sajak Wants to Power Hyperlocal Daily Deals for SMBs

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The longtime Wheel of Fortune host caught up with Street Fight recently to talk about his decision to became the face of a daily deal franchise, why he remains optimistic about the future of local media, and the “great Irony” of an increasingly sensitive Internet constituency…

Gilt Groupe Co-founder Tries Her Hand at On-Demand

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Earlier this year, Glamsquad, a seed stage startup offering in-home hair and makeup services, brought on Gilt Groupe co-founder and early advisor Alexandra Wilkis Wilson as chief executive. Street Fight caught up with Wilkis Wilson last week to discuss the challenges in merging the data-driven ecommerce approach with the realities of running a real-world service…

At Pinterest, a New Pitch to Small Businesses

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Pinterest has managed to carve out a solid domain in a jam-packed social media landscape. Now, it’s time to build a business — and the local market is poised to play a big role, said Joel Meek, the head of the company’s small business efforts, during a BIA/Kelsey event in San Francisco on Thursday…

Will The On-Demand Economy Loosen Google’s Grip on Local?

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Over the past decade, Google has controlled the way we find and interact with local businesses with an indomitable grip. But will a shift away from the information-based businesses — namely, search and advertising — to more transactional models lead to a change? According to speakers at a BIA/Kelsey event yesterday, that’s a distinct possibility…

Bluetooth Low Energy, The Tech Behind Beacons, Closes a Privacy Loophole

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The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has ratified the newest iteration of the wireless communication standard that will, among other things, hide the media access control (MAC) address that can be used to identify and track user movements…

WeddingWire CEO: Building Technology For The Ephemeral Consumer

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The ephemeral quality of the wedding consumer creates a fascinating dynamic for technology companies that serve the market. Last week, Street Fight caught up with WeddingWire CEO Tim Chi to talk about the changing opportunity for vertical marketplaces, and the role of software in building relationships with merchants…

Hyperlocal M&A in 2015 — Here’s What Some Potential Acquirers Are Looking For

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With the new year just around the corner, corporate development teams are undoubtedly gearing up for 2015 acquisitions. The local technology industry saw plenty of M&A activity in 2014 and remains poised for another busy year as established firms look to stay on top and a new batch of public companies come into capital…

Street Fight Daily: Twitter Adds Offers, Uber Eyes $40B Valuation

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Twitter Introduces Offers: Discounts You Claim in Tweets and Redeem in Stores (Recode)… Uber Said Poised to Raise Funds Showing $40 Billion Value (Bloomberg)… Clinkle Is Bribing College Students With a Vending Machine Full of Cash (ValleyWag)…

Meet Pager: The App That Calls Local Doctors To Your Living Room

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The house call, once a staple of American medicine, is now typically reserved for the small set of wealthy clientele willing to pay out-of-pocket for a home visit. But a startup in New York believes that an evolving healthcare system paired with an increasingly delivery-friendly consumer may create the right environment for on-demand medicine…

What Do The Internet and Your Commute Have In Common? A Lot More Than You Think.

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A handful of ex-engineers from Google and a specialist from Stanford want to take their learning from playing traffic cop on the web to solve the congestion problems plaguing some of the world’s business cities. Their insights into managing congestion at Urban Engines could have valuable lessons for managing local commerce…

Street Fight Daily: Senator Probes Uber, Apple Maps Adds Partners

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Senator Questions Uber on Privacy Practices (New York Times)… Apple Maps Announces New Business Listings Data Partners (Mac Rumors)… Reviewers Mostly Positive, 67% on Yelp Are Either 4 or 5 Stars (Screenwerk)…

How Small Business Software Could Produce The Next Hundred Billion Dollar Company

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A resurgent business software sector has started to use cloud computing to bring cheaper, simpler accounting, point-of-sale and even marketing software to brick-and-mortar businesses. With their advances, the era of entrepreneurship has come to the real world…