Street Fight Daily: 11.08.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Daily-Deal Sites Face Problems Ahead, Report Says (Wall Street Journal)
Forrester Research e-commerce analyst Sucharita Mulpuru says in report that the deal sites face challenges that threaten to slow down, if not end their businesses…
Starbucks Taps China’s Foursquare for Holiday Check-in Campaign (Ad Age)
While Foursquare slowly experiments with near-field communication technologies here in the U.S., one of its Chinese lookalikes is rolling out a massive NFC-powered campaign in Eastern China…
Street Fight Daily: 11.07.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
Combined Urban Airship + Simple Geo Take $15 Million in Funding (Uncrunched)
It looks like Simple Geo may have made a solid bet after all. Last week the company was acquired by Urban Airship in an all stock transaction that was actually part of a much larger financing: Urban Airship’s Series C round of funding…
Kevin Rose’s Oink: Stop Rating Places – Rate the Stuff Inside Them Instead (SiliconFilter)
The big difference between Oink and Foursquare or Yelp is that Oink doesn’t focus on places so much as on the things inside them. Instead of rating a local restaurant, for example, you would rate the pizza you had there…
How Dating’s Personalized, Localized Future is Good for Groupon
Groupon’s long awaited IPO was wildly oversubscribed, according to AllThingsD – by a factor of $10. The stock priced initially at $20 per share, well over the target pricing of $16 to $18. Considering all the bad press Groupon has endured and slings and arrows from wary small businesspeople and grumpy old CPAscalling for an […]
Local Quotables: BJ Emerson, John Paton, Matt McAlister and more…
The best words about and around the hyperlocal industry. Lots of talk about Groupon this week — its friends-and-family start; who its competitors are; what merchants think. Yipit’s Jim Moran makes a quip about the Groupon-Living Social rivarly. In non-Groupon news, John Paton extends an apology in response to a controversial Journal Register article, and […]
Street Fight Daily: 11.04.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
The Deal Is On! Groupon Gets $700 Million IPO (PaidContent)
Groupon this week has confirmed itself as the biggest daily deals site of them all, not just in terms of users but value, as it raised $700 million in its IPO — the biggest in tech since Google — valuing the company at around $12.8 billion…
Yahoo Livestand and Local News Aggregation (Nieman Lab)
Ken Doctor: Local should be a green field for the tablet news aggregators. While the big national and global news sites have established powerful app platforms, most local news publishers are way behind the curve, and falling farther behind every day…
ReachLocal Kills Bizzy, Takes $3.3 Million Loss
Location-based recommendation service Bizzy has announced that it will be shutting down in mid-November, marking a major turn of momentum in the local recommendation space. According to a statement released on the company’s blog, the application folded because it “ultimately did not attract the number of users it needed to sustain itself in the long run.”
Street Fight Daily: 11.03.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
AOL’s Armstrong Talks Patch Strategy in Q3 Earnings Call (PaidContent)
“When you talk to major auto makers, half goes into local and regional,” Armstrong said, saying that AOL will also be aiming more heavily at local retailers as the company works to make Patch profitable. Armstrong didn’t provide any clearer sense, however, when Patch would be evenly profitable, as opposed to the expectation that some parts of the network will do more than break even by the end of the year…
Groupon’s IPO Is Coming — But How Much Is It Really Worth? (GigaOm)
Colleen Taylor: It’s been a long and winding road, but Groupon is set to hold its initial public offering on the stock market any day now, with several reports saying the IPO will take place by week’s end. It will be interesting to see just how high Groupon goes once it actually hits the public market…
A Conversation With Ted Leonsis on Social, Local and Mobile
Ted Leonsis understands social media better than you. Let’s just start there. And he doesn’t just understand it academically, or as a learned practitioner, or even as a social media services innovator (which he was). I’d like to think social media is visceral to Leonsis, but that would miss the mark, too. The truth is […]
Main Street Connect Announces New CEO, $7 Million in Funding
Main Street Connect, the network of hyperlocal news sites, announced yesterday that Thompson Reuters’ Global Head of Product Management Zohar Yardeni would come on as CEO, replacing founder Carll Tucker who will become chairman of the company’s board of directors. The company also announced $7 million in new funding, matching an inaugural round raised a year ago…
Street Fight Daily: 11.02.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Aol’s Patch Taps Ad Tech Startup PaperG To Boost Local Ad Sales (TechCrunch)
PaperG has announced that its technology will be released in over 100 of Patch’s markets, enabling Patch sales teams access instant ad creation, management, and optimization for their litany of local advertisers…
Groupon Founders Will Control Majority Stake Even After IPO (AllThingsD)
Groupon has conducted a two-for-one stock split and recapitalized all of its outstanding shares into newly issued shares of Class A and B stock. CEO Andrew Mason, Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky and Director Bradley Keywell will now control 58.1 percent of the voting shares…
#SFS11 VIDEO: What’s the Next Move for Daily Deals?
In a panel at the Street Fight Summit, three top executives from the daily deals industry debated how the phenomenon would evolve, how companies might bring more value to merchants, and what types of companies were most likely to survive. The panel featured Closely CEO Perry Evans, Dealbird CEO Chad Billmyer, and Group Commerce CEO Jonty Kelt…
Street Fight Daily: 11.01.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Urban Airship’s Partnership With SimpleGeo Turns Into An Acquisition (TechCrunch)
SimpleGeo has been acquired by Urban Airship for approximately $3.5 million. In July, the two companies formed a strategic partnership which was intended to provide better ways for developers to offer location-aware push notifications in their applications…
Groupon’s Product Expansion Masks Decline in Core Local Deals Business (Yipit Blog)
Groupon grew 8% in North American from Q2 to Q3 because of the new products it launched, but its core local deals business actually dropped 3%…
#SFS11 VIDEO: Yipit’s Vacanti on Why Groupon’s Bubble Has Burst
At last week’s Street Fight Summit in New York, Yipit co-founder Vinicius Vacanti said that it was clear that Groupon’s valuation bubble has burst, but the daily deals industry and the big players in it are alive and well. In this full-length video of his keynote, he describes some of the dynamics affecting the deals companies, and suggests where the industry may be headed…
Owens, Tucker Spar Over Indies’ Profitability
Last week, The Batavian’s Howard Owens penned a post on his personal blog about why independent hyperlocal sites were better positioned to be profitable long-term than scaled hyperlocal networks. Main Street Connect’s Carll Tucker, who believes that he has come upon a scalable formula for hyperlocal profitability, responded to Owens’ post last week, setting off a lively debate in the posts’ comments section over whether indies or scaled networks really have the upper hand when it comes to profitability…
Street Fight Daily: 10.31.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Gilt City Picks Up BuyWithMe at a Discount (AllThingsD)
The daily deals site operated by fashion and luxury online retailer Gilt Groupe, has acquired daily deals company BuyWithMe. Gilt will be purchasing BuyWithMe’s assets, including its member and vendor lists, as well as some of its technology…
Cachet, Not Cash Fuels NYT’s Local Team-Ups (NetNewsCheck)
The New York Times’ local partnerships with the Bay Citizen, the Texas Tribune and the Chicago News Cooperative have been a boon to the legitimacy nonprofit sites and their missions to raise the level of local journalism in their markets. But some acknowledge that weighing the Times’ needs against their own can be a challenge…
Could Siri Make Hyperlocal Hypervocal?
The audible realm in my mind is a better communications medium for brain processing than the symbolic realm — which is The domain of text-based or even much video advertising. Only the very best ads cross over into true pattern recognition where our minds shine. Sounds, however, are something we are far better wired for than words. Which is why Pandora has done extremely well with its advertising response rates as compared to other forms of online media.
Local Quotables: Steve Buttry, Jeff DeBalko, Eric Friedman and more…
The best words about and around the hyperlocal industry. At the Street Fight Summit, the quote of the event came from Datasphere’s Gary Cowan. Elsewhere, John Byers cautioned on the long-term repercussions of working with Groupon and Yipit’s David Sinsky had some serious analysis on the company. Meanwhile, Journal Register’s Jim Brady and Steve Buttry both […]
Drawing the Line on Advertorial Content for Hyperlocals
One way to boost revenue for a hyperlocal news site may be to supplement editorial content with paid content — such as advertorials, sponsored reviews, or endorsements. But a hyperlocal publisher who takes this path may walk into a legal landmine unless they’re completely transparent in distinguishing its editorial content from its paid content…