Street Fight Daily: DNAinfo Preps Expansion, Google Rethinks Local Discovery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Joe Ricketts ready to launch DNAinfo in Chicago (Chicago Business Journal)… A New Google App Gives You Local Information — Before You Ask for It (New York Times)… Amazon Could Be Working On A Square Competitor (TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: Pew Studies Local News, LevelUp White Labeled
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… New Pew study: Where You Live Helps Shape Your News Diet (Nieman Journalism Lab)… LevelUp Arms Merchants With White Label Payment Apps (GigaOm)… Local Corp., a Web 1.0 Company, Thrusts Itself into Mobile Era with New iOS and Android Apps (Pando Daily)…
How Restaurants Can ‘Listen’ to Location-Based Services
Many restaurants take a pulse of the Twitter and Facebook conversation about them, but how is that information being combined with and understood alongside location-based services like Foursquare? Perhaps the bigger question to ask is, if you’ve invested in social media fan building, how are you correlating that social data with the behaviors of those fans in the physical world?
Extending User Reviews to Places, Block by Block
Block Avenue launched last week with an offering that gives locals the opportunity to grade their neighborhoods, blocks and businesses down to the building level. Users assign grades from A to F on specific blocks and for businesses, which are displayed on maps to show the destination spots (A’s) as well as danger zones (F’s)…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Sees Talent Drain, Analyst Slams Zillow
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… As Groupon Struggles, Some of Its Brighter Talent is Walking Out Door (Chicago Sun-Times)… Shares of Zillow Sink After Analyst Says Prospects Stink (GeekWire)… Apple v. Google Will Define the Fourth Wave of Online Mapping (Venture Beat)…
We’ve Seen the Past — And It Is ‘The Neighborhood’
For the past few years, social startups have been spiraling inward toward a smaller and smaller target: your neighborhood, your block. Now Patch is going all in by to leverage neighborhoods through communities of interest. But maybe neighborhoods are an artificial constructs, with borders that mean little even to those they bind. If that’s the case, we need to rethink a lot more than design and tools and lessons of the past…
Nimble Commerce Expands Off of White-Label Model, Launches Deal Exchange
White label deal purveyor Nimble Commerce has taken a page from the online advertising industry’s book, rolling out an offers exchange this morning to play matchmaker between local publishers and sales forces. Called Nimble Network, the product takes much of the thinking from only ad exchanges and applies it to the deals space…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Snaps Up Savored, Ebay’s Mobile Momentum
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Groupon Moves Into Restaurant Reservations With Savored Deal (New York Times)… EBay’s Mobile Momentum: 100M App Downloads, 100M Items Listed (All Things D)… Data Firm Hits Craigslist With Monopoly Claim (GigaOm)…
7 Reporting Tools for Hyperlocal Journalists
It can be difficult for journalists covering hyperlocal news events to find enough relevant information and quality sources to generate the types of comprehensive articles and reports that readers find useful. Here are seven tools that hyperlocal journalists can use to streamline the process of gathering data and generating the types of multiplatform content that readers embrace…
Street Fight Daily: Village Voice Sold, Groupon Cuts Loom
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Village Voice Media Execs Acquire The Company’s Famed Alt Weeklies, Form New Holding Company (TechCrunch)… As Groupon’s New Operations Czar Seeks to Streamline, Job Cuts Loom (Crain’s Chicago Business)… Local Search Cage Match: Google Vs. Apple Maps (And Siri) (Search Engine Land)…
Patch Redesign Emphasizes Social as Path to Revenue Growth
AOL’s hyperlocal news network released a major redesign Sunday evening, pushing the platform away from a traditional editorial news property and into a more social, user-driven service. The move marks the beginning of what AOL CEO Tim Armstrong called “phase two” in the company’s evolution…
Poll: 66% of Consumers Visit Hyperlocal News Sites
Two-thirds of U.S. consumers visit hyperlocal news sites within their area, according to a recent Street Fight poll, with 9% visiting multiple times per day, 26% visiting on a daily basis, and another 16% doing so weekly. The 500-person survey, conducted on behalf of Street Fight by third-party opinions site Toluna QuickSurveys, reveals an avid and growing reader base…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Offers, Groupon Editor Exits
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Facebook Adds Barcodes, New Ad-Buy Rider To Its Offers Coupon Product (TechCrunch)… Groupon Loses Managing Editor to Sun-Times Parent Wrapports (Romenesko)… Trulia Stock Pops on Opening Day (Wired)…
Extracting Key Metrics to Make Your Hyperlocal Site More Valuable
“Quantitative” data — those UVs and PVs — work effectively for advertisers who want volume, Lofgren says, but most hyperlocals aren’t big enough to deliver multi-millions numbers in audience. “Qualitative” data, he says, tells you who your customers are — by their activity on the site, as it’s actually happening — or their identity, with information neatly served up from sign-up info. But it can tell much more if the publisher surveys a sampling of site visitors with multiple-choice questions…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Pays Up, Yelp Shines in Apple Maps
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Groupon Promising Merchants “Lowest Cost” Payments Service (And It’s Using an iPhone) (All Things D)… You May Hate Apple Maps, But the Yelp Integration is Something to Love (Venture Beat)… How Better Location Data Could Mean More-targeted Mobile Ads (GigaOm)…
New Jersey Hyperlocal Network TAP Celebrates 4 Years, Continues to Expand
Former lawyer Mike Shapiro’s The Alternative Press has now grown to 18 separate hyperlocal publications, including licensees, and is preparing for another major expansion. How does Shapiro do what some news industry experts have said is next to impossible for independent community sites like his? Street Fight caught up with him recently to find out…