Exit Interview: Thinknear Founder Eli Portnoy Leaves Telenav
Two years after Telenav acquired Thinknear, the startup’s founder Eli Portnoy has left the company. We caught up with Portnoy to talk about some of the surprises in the mobile advertising industry over the past few years, whether location merits its own sandbox, and how his views about the small businesses market have evolved…
Alignable Growing a Social Network for Small Businesses
Founded by the co-founders of Constant Contact and Invisalign, Alignable allows small businesses owners to share information, ask questions, and seek answers from other merchants nearby and business owners in similar industries across the country. Think Nextdoor — but with worried store owners instead of overbearing parents.
Street Fight Daily: Local’s SEO Bible, Google Eyes Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Local SEO Bible: The 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors (LocalSearchInsider)… Google Adopts Delivery-Service Model, Targets Amazon (Nasdaq)… Retailers Pin Hopes on Holidays After Sluggish Summer Sales (AdAge)…
Why comScore Wants to Measure the Real World
Earlier this week, Comscore announced a new partnership with Datalogix, the payment data startup that has already inked deals with Facebook and Twitter. Street Fight caught up with Comscore’s Andrew Lipsman to discuss the developments that opened the door for offline attribution and whether ApplePay will make a difference for the company…
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Opens A Store, Google Rolls Back Pigeon?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon to Open First Physical Store in Manhattan (CNBC)… Pigeon Rolled Back? Law Firm Study Says Yes (SearchEngineLand)… Supply-Side Challenges Of The On-Demand Economy (TechCrunch)…
Beacons Do Pose a Privacy Threat — But It’s Not the One You’re Worried About
Earlier this week, Buzzfeed published a scathing report detailing an initiative by outdoor advertising giant Titan to install bluetooth beacons in hundreds of phone booths across New York City. But the report does more to underscore the shortcomings of the local technology industry in explaining the new technology than to expose a new, meaningful threat to the consumer privacy…
Why a Former Current TV Exec Believes in the Economics of Local Video
Street Fight recently caught up with Mark Goldman, the former COO of Current TV and current chief of online video platform ExtendTV, to talk about missed opportunities with Current, why he believes digital will not kill television (completely), and where he sees the local video market heading in the next few years…
At GoDaddy, CEO Blake Irving Searches for a New Domain
Irving has an ambitious plan to turn GoDaddy into a much larger, and more profitable, company. The strategy begins with the company’s 12 million domain customers and ends with a constellation of concentric services intended to serve an increasingly entrepreneurial, and distributed, global economy…
In Navigating Supply and Demand, Groupon Hopes for New Life
During a presentation at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local event in New Orleans Tuesday, Dan Roarty, vice president of local commerce at Groupon, positioned the company’s deal marketplace as one part of a much more ambitious effort to create a platform that connects local supply and local demand well-beyond the confines of an email blast…
Five Lessons Google Learned About Selling to Small Businesses
For Google, the shift to mobile presents an opportunity to learn from mistakes made during the desktop internet boom. James Croom, head of marketing for the project, has spent five years in the company’s small business team. He said Monday that the company’s new Google My Business project builds on some learnings from the company’s Get Your Business Online effort launched in 2009 to drive business across the world to build websites…
Ecommerce Companies Finding Success in Brick-and-Mortar
The move into physical retail has become a fashionable choice within New York’s growing ecommerce industry. Now, these firms are finding that industry watchers may have overstated the economic advantages of an online-only sales model particularly as new technologies allow retailers to reduce the footprint needed to generate sufficient revenue.
Street Fight Daily: Samsung Teams With PayPal, Amazon Loses Local Commerce Exec
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Samsung is Teaming With Paypal for Mobile Payments on a Watch (GigaOm)… Amazon Loses Key Payments Product Leader to Microsoft (Recode)… More Than Half of US Consumers Don’t Want to Friend a Brand Online (Wall Street Journal)…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Tweaks Algorithm, Airbnb Shuffles Amid IPO Speculation
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Updates Its Algorithm (Yet) Again. (GigaOm)… Airbnb Finance Chief Swain Departs Amid IPO Speculation (Bloomberg)… The End Is Near For Panoramio, Google To Migrate Photos To Google Maps Views (VentureBeat)…
Handybook Rebrands As Handy, Says It Grew 10x in Past 9 Months
New York-based Handybook, which allows users to book pre-approved home service providers through a mobile app or website, is dropping the “book” from its name, rebranding as Handy to avoid confusion with — well — books. The company’s chief executive Oisin Hanrahan believes the move will help the company develop the type of brand that has helped to propel Uber and Airbnb into multi-billion dollar companies.
Signpost Adds Payment Integration as Small Business CRM Market Grows
Signpost, a New York-based startup that got its start selling deals software to small business, wants to expand deeper into maybe the most important sources of data in the front-office: payments. The company has rolled out a new product that can programmatically pull customer information from a phone call or credit card swipe, and then send text messages or emails to those people with offers or requests for reviews…
Ecommerce Retailer Indochino Ventures into Brick-and-Mortar
Indochino, a Vancouver-based apparel brand that made its name selling custom suits online, opens its first permanent retail showroom in New York today in a move that builds on a series of pop-up shops that the apparel maker has hosted in cities across the country for the past few years. It’s just the latest in a series of ecommerce firms to invest in brick-and-mortar retail…