Partnership With Foursquare Is a Natural Step for Groupon
Earlier this week All Things Digital reported that Groupon and Foursquare were discussing a partnership to push local deals targeted to location-aware check-ins. The media world has been buzzing about the rumor, but neither company has broken an official silence to confirm (or deny) the partnership or discussions. Perhaps it’s just a foregone conclusion, though, that Groupon would add immediacy and social distribution to its model. In fact it already has…
Where Hyperlocal Meets Digital-Out-Of-Home
The digital out-of-home advertising sector — all those networked screens you see on top of gas pump tops and in elevators, 7-11s, waiting rooms and the back seats of taxis — couldn’t be happier about the rise in popularity of location apps and daily deal coupons. Finally the hyperlocal targeting that is a part of what these networks of screens can do has some consumer-driven energy and contextual relevance behind it…
Local Deals’ Second Act: Dynamic, Mobile
In the tech and media worlds, it’s no secret that local deals and mobile are exploding — both in terms of revenue growth as well as in the attention and investment being lavished upon them. Surprisingly, though, the two elements haven’t yet come together to the degree that they probably should…
An Engaged Audience Is Key to Hyperlocal Success
The true value of a hyperlocal site is its audience, but eyeballs alone aren’t enough. To create a thriving hyperlocal site today, an editor needs to attract and hold the attention of an engaged readership. Even more importantly, to sustain a hyperlocal site with limited resources, that audience needs to play an active role in providing and responding to its content.
How a ‘Geo-Contextual’ Ad Campaign Produces Results
Hyperlocal has become one of the most intriguing new ideas for retailers and national brands looking to reach specific markets. Some people ask what the difference is between “local” and “hyperlocal” from a media perspective. I think the difference is clear. Traditionally, “local” media has meant DMA or metro level content such as major metro newspaper Web sites. But they could cover a pretty vast geography. Conversely, “hyperlocal” means granular, community-based or zip-code-level content…
Healing What Ails Local
Local has always been regarded as the sleeping giant in digital advertising, with so much heavy lifting required and so few solutions available at scale. But, at long last, a solution may be at hand. Local publishers are now participating in centralized, single point-of-entry buying platforms that give national brands the tools and data needed to buy premium local audiences with national scale.
Choosing a Data Partner for Local: What to Ask
Jeff Wood is a guest author. To submit a guest post, go here.
With all of the talk about data in our industry, I’m surprised that so few of the people I talk to in the Local space have a true data strategy — one that gives them real control over their own data and, most importantly, access to this data for decision-making.
It’s the nature of Local that a publisher loses the scale of large network buys. However, you gain the value of a centralized audience. With granular data, a site focused on the hyperlocal market can quickly understand the value of small pockets of inventory, and make educated decisions around how to package and allocate that inventory for sale across appropriate channels.
It’s amazing how many people simply don’t know who owns the data collected on their sites.
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2011: The Year the Check-in Reached Puberty
Michael Boland is a guest author. To submit a guest post, go here.
In the location wars of the past two years, one of the battle cries has been the need to continually innovate “beyond the check-in” — building things on top of the core check-in function, driven by evolving device capability and user demand (or boredom).
Companies have taken this in various directions — “checking in” to TV shows, for example. Sector leader Foursquare has dabbled in things like Superbowl check-ins.
At least week’s Where 2.0 conference in Santa Clara, California, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley talked about how the check-in grows up even as it stays focused on “the relationship between people and places.”..
Where ‘Hyperlocal’ Is a Movement, Not a Business Model
I’ll bet you £10 that “royal wedding” is the first thought that jumps to the mind of an American journalist asked about Britain today. Yet with the ever-present fixation on their profession’s future, perhaps journalists in the U.S. should look past the palaces to the real action happening at the hyperlocal level…
WhosHere? Two Billion Free Text Messages, That’s Who
I’ve been wondering what happened to WhosHere, and all at once a friend pinged me about them and I’m sent a news bulletin trumpeting how myRete (developer of WhosHere) has delivered its 2 billionth free message on behalf us its 2.5 million members. Nice.
So what is it? As the company states:
WhosHere is the first mobile social networking app for the iPhone to let users meet new people and interact based on proximity. The application introduces a user to others with whom they have something in common. When a user finds someone interesting, they can send free text and image messages and make free VOIP calls. All this is done without disclosing any personal information unless the user chooses to provide it.
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GroupMe Launches ‘Joinable’ Groups (Pssst, groupflier Already Has Them!)
We’ve been over this before: while at AOL in the ’90s I failed to get approval for something I dubbed “Broadcast IM” — the ability to send instant messages via IM (AIM) to more than one person simultaneously, with each user’s response seen by everyone. Kinda like a listserv. Kinda like, yeah, Twitter.
Anyway, a few years later along came the wonderful (for its time) Upoc — group mobile texting and voice messaging. Then the tech bubble and subsequent mobile innovation collapse and general malaise among Americans regarding their use of cellphones beyond blabbing. I feared data on cellphones would become “soccer” – popular everywhere else in the world but too difficult with T9 for lazy Americans. Tick Tock… Hello iPhone. At last things began to really change, as we all now know…
Snapshot: Mobile-Social-Local by the Numbers
I came upon some interesting numbers on mobile social media worth sharing. Lisa Braziel at ignite social media pulled together data from a number of different studies of late to tell a bit of a story about the recent evolution in mobile-social. Unfortunately, like most research of breadth, it’s a piece of the past and not a realtime reflection. So keep that in mind while digesting.
SNL Kagan looked at location-based services activity between ’09 and ’10, finding that usership almost tripled. Braziel concluded this, in addition to other data points, indicate 2011 could be the year of mobile social — where it goes truly mainstream. Take a look at the graphic from eMarketer…
AOL: Time To Pack It In Or Patch Things Up?
Wow, everyone’s ganging up on Patch these days. No surprise, since it’s tied so closely to Aol., a company that has been declared dead so many times by frustrated naysayers that if it ever did expire nobody would believe the news. Yeah, Patch probably gets the dark shade of that negative halo…
Hello Privacy, Meet the New ‘Presence’ – Location
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Many years ago, when you were probably a tween, i was at AOL (sorry, Aol.) and a degree away from the following nugget. I think the folks involved included Ted , Barry Appelman and maybe Eric Bosco. I could have that a bit wrong but roll with me – I’m not the official techstorian and they’ll tell me if I’m wrong…
Civic Networking: The Next Next Thing?
This is the first in a series of guest posts by thought leaders in the local arena. We asked where local-social media might go in 2011.
By Tom Grubisich
Some Cassandras are forecasting the end of social networking. I will keep my ear next to my computer for the sound of some 600 million people migrating to the next big thing, but don’t think Facebook faces doomsday any time soon. Or Foursquare, Yelp or Gowalla, to name just a few of the proliferating social networks that have claimed a piece of Web space. But I do think social networking is on the threshold of an important evolution that will both affirm its basic value but also take it into new and ever more beneficial directions. Shaping this transformation are economic, technological and societal forces that are propelling people toward a path with many entry points but one destination: to act together and to do so smarter and locally…
Ultra Local, Simplicity, Ego Lead the Way in 2011
I thought I’d wait for the smoke to clear on all the 2011 tech prognostications before filing a few of my own. These are actually a bit less predictions than bankable trends. Their focus is on mobile but also the things around the edges that will make mobile-local interesting, scary, useful, intrusive and wonderful in the coming 363 days.
Simple Gets Simpler: Successful online and mobile experiences will become much closer to being intuitive than ever before, anticipating not the geek’s natural next clicks but the average Jane’s. I’m not talking about Web 2.X, with its big buttons, oversize input boxes and Ajax popovers but rather one action to the next dictated by the glassy smoothness of an inhale following and exhale. This is true behavioral anticipation leaving no room for confusion and no time for pause. Simple = successful…
7 Things I Want From My Phone for Christmas
I’m a little weary of the “Holiday Tech Stuff” roundups, as I suspect are you, so let’s just leap right into what I’d demand from Cell-a-Claus and his App Elves, were he to ask.
I’ve been a goo… not horrible guy this year, Cell-a, really. And I’m not asking for anything current technology would not permit. So please bring me the following:
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‘Location’ is at Apple’s iPhone Core (Patently Apple)
The site Patently Apple has a rather interesting observation about some of the recent patent filings by Apple related to its iPhone. According to PA via records it has surface Apple is attacking the big and the small around geolocation, with technological tweaks and improvements (that are actually
quite complex) and practical setups to solving common human needs like “what am I about to pass on my trip to grandma’s that I might be interested in?”…
Foursquare, Groupon, and the Market-Making Problem
With Groupon’s filing to go public last week, there has been even more debate over the two-sided market strategy of consumers and local merchants. Another business that has focused on this approach is Foursquare. Is the window of opportunity closing for Foursquare to become the breakout success it could be? The answer depends on how much the company is willing to change its DNA to serve both sides of their market — and perhaps take a few lessons on self-serve and average selling price from Groupon…