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…
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 […]
Street Fight Daily: 10.28.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Google is collaborating with discount luxury network Gilt City as it looks to expand its Google Offers deals service. The partnership comes as the search giant has been adding a number of new coupon features and retailers to its mobile payments product, Google Wallet. (PaidContent)…
The Guardian is testing a new hyperlocal service called “n0tice,” which is an attempt to create a publishing platform based on location — and it uses the metaphor of a community noticeboard to get there. (GigaOm)…
#SFS11 VIDEO: Jeff Jarvis Interviews Foursquare GM Evan Cohen
In a “fireside chat” that closed the first day of Street Fight Summit 2011 this week, BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis interviewed Evan Cohen, the general manager of Foursquare. Cohen touched on a number of different issues affecting the company, and revealed that Foursquare will soon be adding a “save” button that publishers can embed…
How Is Citizen Journalism Playing Out Today?
Citizen journalism has propelled hundreds of hyperlocal news sites into existence. In the middle of the last decade, CitJ, particularly at the community level, was the hot topic in new media. Journalism’s thinkers saw it as a necessary and overdue reinvention of news (see Dan Gillmor, Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, among others). So how is it actually playing out today — on the ground? To find out, I asked publishers and editors who have been part of the hyperlocal phenomenon.
Street Fight Daily: 10.27.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
“Deals don’t mean dollars. That was a point of consensus at the inaugural Street Fight Summit,” writes Jeremy Caplan. “A key question threaded throughout the conference was how best to turn local consumers into reliable revenue streams. The most valuable insights for independent publishers in attendance centered around new opportunities for better serving local businesses.” (Poynter)…
When hyperlocal news sites can’t compete on CPMs, where else can they find revenue? The St. Louis Beacon, a nonprofit online publication for regional news, sought to tie revenue strategies to its mission, business manager Shawn McGinness said. (PaidContent)…
Street Fight Announces Research, More Events
Taking the podium on the second morning of the Street Fight Summit 2011 in New York City, Street Fight co-founder David Hirschman said that Hyperlocal Industries, which publishes the Street Fight website, would soon launch a research division and host more events like the Summit in 2012.
Real Estate Content Beyond the Listings
At the Street Fight Summit, speakers regularly mentioned that many local businesses are far behind the curve not just on hyperlocal marketing, but also in terms of a basic Web presence. No industry is better positioned to lead the way than real estate, said WellcomeMat founder Phil Thomas Di Giulio during a panel on Wednesday afternoon. The panel, […]
LBS and Retail: Big Brands vs. Small Merchants
Big brands and small businesses see value in location-based technology differently — but both are competing for the same mobile consumer. That was a key takeaway from a panel about location-based services on day two of the Street Fight Summit, moderated by Doug Stephens, president of Retail Prophet.
Yipit’s Vacanti: Groupon’s Bubble Has Burst
Has the bubble burst in the daily deals industry? Vinicius Vacanti, co-founder of Yipit, addressed this question while kicking off the second day of the Street Fight Summit in New York today. The Groupon valuation bubble might have burst, but the daily deals industry and the big players in it are alive and well, he said. Businesses are […]
Street Fight Daily: 10.26.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Hyperlocal news sites regard Groupon and other daily deal services with a mixture of love (for flooding their coffers with ad dollars) and dread (for competing with their own deal offerings). Merchants ought to feel the same way, said Gary Cowan, senior vice president of product and marketing for Datasphere. (Forbes)… Foursquare is poised to relaunch Add to Foursquare under the new name Save to Foursquare in the next month. (GigaOm)…
Foursquare GM Cohen: ‘Save’ Button Coming Soon
In a fireside chat with Jeff Jarvis on the first day of the inaugural Street Fight Summit, Foursquare’s Evan Cohen said his company’s laser focus on location and mobile gives it a big advantage over other social companies. He noted that Facebook Places quickly flopped while Foursquare’s numbers kept growing. “We won a very exciting battle, and I feel good about it, but I won’t say we’ve won the war,” Cohen said…
CBS Pairs Traditional and Digital Media to Reach Consumers
On the first day of the inaugural Street Fight Summit, Ezra Kucharz, president of CBS Local Digital Media, said that TV and radio are not going anywhere, but that broadcasting will continue to integrate more with online and mobile. CBS has dramatically reshaped its local online properties to combine content across platforms, resulting in major traffic growth over the past year…
Patch vs. Main Street Connect: How Will Hyperlocal Scale?
Does size really matter in hyperlocal? Publishers debated the point on a panel during the first day of the Street Fight Summit. Patch CEO Warren Webster, naturally, said yes: “2010 was all about scaling up. We do believe that size is important.” Main Street Connect CEO Carll Tucker disagreed, saying that his publication started small and built outward, not wanting to “mass produce and see the wheels fall off.”
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.