Street Fight Daily: Airbnb Clashes In Court, DeliveryHero Raises $85M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… New York’s Case Against Airbnb Is Argued in Albany (New York Times)… Delivery Hero Gobbles Another $85M To Fuel A Price War With Just-Eat (TechCrunch)… Facebook’s “Nearby Friends” Must Work Against the Historical Failure of People Discovery (GigaOm)…
6 Ways to Improve Business Operations Using Indoor Location Data
In many cases, indoor location analytics platforms take the guesswork out of operations management. Rather than guessing whether expensive in-store displays are increasing conversions, and wondering how dwell times influence sales, retailers can look at the data being spit out by their analytics platforms to find their answers. Here are six ways that businesses can use indoor location tools to improve in-store operations…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Plans Mobile Ad Network, Apple Readies Payment Push
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Plans Mobile-Ad Network (Wall Street Journal)… Apple Interviewing Job Candidates for Mobile Payments Push (Recode)… Square Denies Report of Potential Sale (USA Today)…
xAd CEO: Small Businesses Still a ‘Huge, Huge Market’ for Ad Tech
Location marketing company xAd, which started as a search advertising firm five years ago, generated over $65 million in run-rate revenue by the end of last year, half of which came from small and medium-sized businesses. Street Fight recently caught up with the company’s chief executive Dipanshu Sharma to discuss the challenges in finding recurring revenue in mobile, how location can solve that problem, and where the money would come from to build a lasting local advertising company in mobile…
8 Tools to Send Messages to Shoppers Based on In-Store Movements
Forty-four percent of shoppers now say they’ve used their smartphones for product research while standing in a store’s aisles, which means marketers who fail to connect with customers through effective in-store messaging are losing out on engagement at a critical time in the buying process. Here are eight tools that merchants can use to send offers or promotions based on their customers’ real-time indoor movements…
Street Fight Daily: Square Discusses Sale, Facebook’s Local Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Mobile-Payments Startup Square Discusses Possible Sale (Wall Street Journal)… Facebook ‘Nearby Friends’ Will Track Your Location History To Target You With Ads (TechCrunch)… TPG-Led Group Closes $450 Million Investment in Airbnb (Wall Street Journal)…
Niche Site CHARLIE Goes Big With Underwriter Le Creuset
After an initial stint doing publicity in the movie industry in Los Angeles, Caroline Nuttall migrated to Charleston, S.C., and fell “head over heels” for its “beauty and progressive culture.” She expressed her passion for the city by creating the local digital magazine CHARLIE, whose words, images and design capture the many faceted, old-new richness of her publication’s namesake. Here Nuttall tells Street Fight how she navigated CHARLIE to new revenue streams, including an underwriting partnership with national cookware maker Le Creuset.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s ‘Nearby Friends,’ Twitter Debuts App Promo Suite
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… 
Facebook’s “Nearby Friends” Feature Aims for More Offline Connections (Recode)… Twitter’s New Ad Unit Is A Huge, Huge Deal. Here’s Why (Forbes)… Citymapper Just Got Off the Funding Bus and Is Now $10M Richer (VentureBeat)…
Street Fight Daily: LevelUp Eyes ‘Zero Interchange,’ Zuckerberg on Graph Search
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… 
LevelUp Thinks It Has Found A Way To Charge Merchants A 0% Credit Card Processing Fee (Business Insider)… Zuckerberg: Facebook Graph Search Is ‘A Five-Year Thing’ (SearchEngineLand)… Seamless Delivers Tips Agreement (WSJ)…
In Run-Up to IPO, Yodle Makes Its Bet on Local Marketing Automation
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that local marketing firm Yodle was shopping for banks to underwrite a potential public offering. In an interview with Street Fight, Court Cunningham, chief executive at Yodle, declined to comment on the reports, but talked about the the evolution of the small business marketing space, the rise of local marketing automation, and the subsequent push by these companies to bundle services into an integrated product…
Microsoft Research Project Tells You What a Neighborhood Is Thinking
HereHere, which launched earlier this year, profiles the 42 neighborhoods in New York City by collecting publicly available 311 data to reveal the most talked-about issues in the boroughs. By entering their zip code, a user can interact with an animated map displaying the neighborhood’s statuses, seeing updates like “delighted” or “uncomfortable.”
Street Fight Daily: Twitter Buys Gnip, Google Developing Microcamera Contact Lens
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… 
Twitter Embraces Its Data and Buys Gnip (GigaOm)… Google’s Microcamera Contact Lens Is Coming to an Eyeball Near You (Time)… Seeking Growth, The Payments Industry Embraces New Technologies (TechCrunch)…
Facebook’s Levy: ‘No Singular Event’ Triggered Decline in Businesses’ Organic Reach
According to multiple reports, the social networking company has “slashed organic page reach,” reducing the number of users which can see a business’s photos, posts, and updates. In a wide ranging interview with Street Fight, Dan Levy, director of small business at Facebook, talks about the decline organic reach for businesses, the evolving relationship between marketer and consumer, and the company’s unique challenge of managing 25 million business clients…
7 Tools for Re-activating Dormant Customers
The cost of acquiring a new customer is five times higher than the cost to keep an existing one, which is one of the reasons why businesses of all sizes are beefing up their loyalty programs and using social media to keep fans engaged. But what about customers who’ve fallen off the bandwagon — those whose accounts have gone dormant after not coming in for a period of weeks or months?
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Eyes Mobile Payments, Microsoft Supports Passbook
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Moves Deeper Into Mobile Payments (Financial Times)… Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8.1 Update Supports Apple Passbook Passes (TechCrunch)… A Silicon Valley Disater: A 21-Year-Old Stanford Kid Got $30 Million, Then Everything Blew Up (Business Insider) …
The New Patch: One Site’s ‘Entrepreneurial’ Editor on the First 60 Days
Patch, under its new owner Hale Global, is experimenting with new approaches for structuring and operating hyperlocal news sites, which, in general, have a reputation for losing money. One experiment is creating entrepreneurial editor-publishers for sites in the strongest markets. Sixty days into the experiment, longtime reporter Susan Petroni, explains her new dual role at the Framingham, Mass., Patch…
6 Strategies for Maximizing the Effects of Pay-Per-Call Campaigns
Pay-per-call campaigns may not be sexy, but they have proven to be extremely effective for both small businesses and large multi-location organizations. Particularly in “high-value categories” like professional services, home services, travel, insurance, and automotive, phone leads can be more valuable than online clicks or impressions. Here are six strategies that merchants should utilize to maximize the effects of their pay-per-call campaigns…
Street Fight Daily: Google Tracks Offline Purchases, Alibaba Buys Mapping Firm
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Tests a Way to Follow You to the Mall (Wall Street Journal)…. Alibaba to Acquire Chinese Mapping Firm as Buying Spree Continues (New York Times)… Digital First Names David J. Butler Its Editor-in-Chief (Poynter)…
Locable’s Aim: To Help Sites Build Community as a Brand
Locable is a network of 50 local and hyperlocal websites that shows its “partners” how to build community around their brand. It does this through an approach it calls “Main Street for the 21st Century.” In this recent Q & A with Street Fight, the company’s co-founder and CEO Brian Ostrovsky talks about what this approach means, and how community sites can position themselves for success…