‘Indie’ Hyperlocals Share Their Secrets to Sustainability
“Content remains king. So long as you don’t lose sight of that, much of the rest falls into place,” said Sheepshead Bites editor and publisher Ned Berke. “But, content doesn’t pay the bills, so we’re always looking at ways to improve the services we offer to merchant partners and other revenue opportunities…”
Street Fight Daily: Waze Talks Collapse, Wikipedia Launches ‘Nearby’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Facebook Acquisition Talks With Waze Fall Apart (AllThingsD)… Wikipedia Debuts ‘Nearby’ Feature to Find Pages Around You (VentureBeat)… As Software Trumps Hardware In The World Of Payments, VeriFone Partners With CardSpring For Card-Linked Services (TechCrunch)…
Square’s Kimble: There’s ‘More Opportunity Than Obstacle’ in Payments Space
San Francisco-based mobile payments company Square continues to grow at a rapid clip. Chuck Kimble, who heads up the company’s strategic partnerships, will be appearing on a panel next week in San Francisco at Street Fight Summit West, so we took the opportunity to catch up with him recently over email and find out more about how the company is planning to expand beyond its initial mandate mobile payments…
Street Fight Daily: NYT Tests Native Ads, Online Retailers Dabble Offline
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… The New York Times Experiments with Native Advertising… On Two Wheels (Nieman Journalism Lab)… From Clicks to Bricks: Online Retailers Dabble in Physical Stores (AdAge)… Apple: ‘We Did Not Make a Bid For Waze’ (Mashable)…
Deseret VP: How Disruption Can Drive Digital Media Companies
Deseret Digital Media is often mentioned in conversations about companies doing disruptive things in local media. Eric Bright, the company’s VP for eCommerce, will be appearing on a panel next week in San Francisco at Street Fight Summit West, so we took the opportunity to catch up with him recently and find out more about the mechanics of disrupting the local space…
7 Ways Marketers Can Make Mobile More Attractive to SMBs
From apps to ads to geo-targeted push notifications, the challenge for marketers is explaining the benefits of mobile without overwhelming small business owners in a sea of technical jargon and complex language. Here are seven tips from experts in the mobile community about how marketers can do a better job of selling their products to merchants…
Openings and New Hires at FixYa, VendAsta & SpinGo
Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. Moves include layoffs at the Village Voice, a new top executive at the DPAA, and job openings at Swipely, Intuit, and more.
LBMA PODCAST: Yahoo, Alibaba, and Impact Mobile
In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan talk about Yahoo’s continued campaign to buy employees; big data from Twitter showcases the hate; Alibaba takes a stand in the mapping wars; the re-emergence of RFID for grocery checkout; a Canadian interpretation of the future of Google Glass and our special guest, Gary Schwartz, CEO of Impact Mobile…
Street Fight Daily: Google Eyes Waze, Postmates Looks to NYC
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology... Google Said to Consider Buying Waze (Bloomberg)… On-Demand Delivery Startup Postmates Preparing for NYC Launch (TechCrunch)… INFOGRAPHIC: How Location Data Is Being Collected And Transforming The Mobile Industry (Business Insider)…
Report: Brands Can Save Big by Centralizing Local Marketing
With 99% of co-op dollars spent offline, national brands are missing a massive opportunity to reduce marketing costs and generate leads for local affiliates, according to a new report by Marchex. The study, which analyzed data from past campaigns on the platform, found that by centralizing local marketing campaigns traditionally left to less-savvy local affiliates brands can dramatically improve the impact of their local efforts….
LION President: ‘Indie’ Readership, Revenues ‘Reaching New Heights’
“There’s no ‘proven model’ other than the precept that local news works when it is just that,” said LION president Dylan Smith. “Every community is different; attempting to cover every town and city by ticking a few boxes in a top-down plan is foolhardy at best, and insulting to local readers at worst – as well as being a great way to lose millions of dollars.”
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Fires Back, Walmart Banks on Mobile In-Store
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Yelp Fires Back at Small Business Extortion Claims, Says It’s Not, and ‘Never has Been’, true (TheNextWeb)… Walmart Exec: Mobile Can Revive Personal Touch for Shoppers(CNet)… Square Expands into Asia With Japan Launch (AllThingsD)…
5 Mobile Marketing ‘Musts’ for SMBs
As more consumers look to their smartphones to engage with business locally, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) need to lay out a concise mobile marketing strategy. In a Street Fight webinar Tuesday sponsored by YP, Asif Khan of the Location-based Marketing Association, and YP’s David Williams discussed the trends that make mobile a must for SMBs, and highlighted a handful of first steps that local businesses can take to keep up with their smartphone-wielding customers….
Street Fight Daily: Phone Firms Sell Data, A Day in Court for Yelp
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Phone Firms Sell Data on Customers (Wall Street Journal)… Another Day in Court for Yelp (New York Times)… Hyper-Local: Not A Behavioral Disease (Medium)…
Swipely Raises $12M to Expand Push Into SMB Payment Analytics
The payments space is starting to settle down. The flow of seed funding has slowed, and a handful companies have separated from the pack, raising meaningful capital over the past year. Add Providence-based Swipely to that list. The payments processing and analytics play has raised $12 million in new funding in a series B round led by Shasta Ventures…
Waze Builds Out Traffic Maps to Add Context in Location
Andy Ellwood, the company’s senior director of business development, will be appearing on a panel at Street Fight Summit West in a couple of weeks in San Francisco to talk about how the future of mapping tech plays into hyperlocal marketing. Street Fight caught up with him recently to talk about how Waze makes money, the vitality of context, and fighting off Google…
5 Tips For Optimizing Hyperlocal Sites For Tablets
The real question for hyperlocal publishers isn’t how important tablet readers are, but how best to cater to this group. The publishing standards that work on PC browsers don’t always translate to tablet screens. Here are five strategies that hyperlocal publishers should consider when creating content for readers on tablet devices…