Main Street Connect’s Tucker: Hyperlocal Needs Scale
A veteran in the community news business, Carll Tucker founded the community news company Trader Publications in 1981, built it up, and sold out to Gannett in 1999. Then, two years ago, he came to the conclusion that the community news model he’d been so successful at offline hadn’t really been replicated on the Web. And so he founded Main Street Connect, a small-but-growing collection of community sites that began in Connecticut and soon will expand into Westchester (N.Y.), and beyond…
Street Fight Daily: 05.17.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… Local directory company Yell Group has set a July timetable for announcing the conclusion of its strategic review, which it set in motion early this year in the face of continuing declines at its printed Yellow Pages business. (Paid Content)…
Groupon and Scvngr’s moves last week demonstrated how daily deals and geo-social are on a collision course. Here’s why Facebook might be a step behind other marketing options for deals and geo-social. (Clickz)…
Geomentum’s Lisa Bradner: Thinking Differently About ‘Scale’
When she joined the hyperlocal marketing firm Geomentum in the summer of 2010, Lisa Bradner had worked for two decades in consumer marketing, most recently as an analyst for Forrester Research. With the hyperlocal advertising market expanding rapidly, the move put her in a great position to explore the ways that micro-targeted location-based ads can create more relevant consumer engagement…
Billboards Get Into the Hyperlocal Game
The outdoor advertising industry has seen the writing on the wall, and it’s all about GPS.
At the Geoworld Summit Friday in Brooklyn, N.Y., the representatives of a dozen or more hyperlocal companies hashed through the potential and hurdles for reach the local advertising market.
Most of them sat squarely in the hyperlocal space, offering location-based data services to power publishers, marketers and deals, such as SimpleGeo, JiWire and LocalResponse. Others were there as publishers sharing their experiences, challenges and solutions, such as Baristanet and Gothamist. And mobile services and platforms naturally made up the dialogue, as well, including Goby and LoKast…
Making Peace (and Money) with Local Newspapers
The single-best deal, assertion, investment or other strategy out there.
Who: Gothamist
Why: Because they’ve turned over their hyperlocal ad sales to a local newspaper, the Village Voice
“It’s still ramping up, but I’ve noticed they’ve been selling more each week. For us, the rationale is that it gives us coverage in three verticals that we can’t easily do ourselves – real estate, restaurants and bars. That lets our sales team focus on the verticals they are good at, and sourcing national deals. As long as their performance continues, we’ll begin expanding to the other cities we both have properties in – Los Angeles will be next,” Jake Dobkin, co-founder and publisher of Gothamist, wrote in an email today.
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Groupon Pulls a Netflix with Groupon Now (and That’s a Good Thing)
As with other Groupon subscribers, a $10 credit landed in my in-box this week. The catch? I have to subscribe to Groupon’s mobile app. It’s part of the ongoing and accelerating full-court press by the biggest daily deal site around the launch of Groupon Now, a geotargeted deal product with much tighter time limitations. This is part of Groupon’s grand plan to shift towards becoming a real-time, location specific, expiring inventory deal site rather than a glorified coupon clipper. … Give Groupon credit for taking a page from the Netflix playbook in rapidly moving to seize a better sales mechanism after spying the declining value of its existing one.
Hyperlocal Video Isn’t Ready for “Take-Out”
If you want to know where broadcast content is headed on location-aware devices, Scott Lindenbaum, co-founder and president of Broadcastr, suggests you look no further than your car dashboard: “There’s a reason car televisions never replaced car radios,” he said. “Video in motion is impractical and rather dangerous.” Audio worked because it worked on the go, in motion, allowing the user to remain focused on the present reality (the road) augmented by the content delivered over the radio…
Street Fight Daily: 05.12.11
Murphy USA, a gas station chain with 1,000 locations situated in the parking lots of Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, announced Wednesday that it’s offering $2 off a $20 purchase of gas with a Foursquare checkin. (Mashable)…
Gannett Co. is in the process of launching dozens of hyperlocal Web sites in 10 different markets, in a bold and risky initiative. DataSphere handles ad sales for Gannett’s hyperlocal sites, which are viewed as a growth medium because they provide smaller local businesses with an affordable, highly targeted ad platform. (NetNewsCheck)…
Yelp’s international sites have been growing like crazy, with non-U.S. traffic doubling in the past year….
Austin Bakeshop’s Groupons Reward Existing Customers, Entice Newbies
When newspaper and magazine ads failed to deliver the customers she’d hoped for, Olivia O’Neal turned to the web. As the co-owner of Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop, O’Neal has used group coupons and positive online reviews on sites like Yelp to help turn her from-scratch bakery into a dessert destination for foodies in Austin.
A ‘Vicinity Browser’ That Targets Local with the Power of Social
Once a novelty, “geobrowsing” apps have lately become a bit of a yawn. The products may be useful for navigating the hyperlocal landscape, but they haven’t proven compelling enough to hold consumer interest.
One new-ish product that that might bring geobrowsing back is Cynapse’s Localscope. The iPhone app, which was released in January, does what you might expect from a geo-centered service, gathering information about the area around you from multiple search engines and presenting it on a map. But rather than just focusing on technology or data depth, Localscope takes a lateral step into polishing design and UI to make an elegantly efficient experience…
Street Fight Daily: 05.11.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Groupon has just launched Groupon Now, the company’s much-anticipated time-based deals app that wants to redefine how society eats and shops. The simple application within Groupon’s mobile apps gives a user the ability to find local deals in realtime. (Mashable)…
Google has announced the opening up and general availability of the Google Places API. The service gives developers access to Google’s database of restaurants, bars, hotels and various other points of interest. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Empowering Local Restaurants Online
In 2011, pretty much every restauranteur knows that their business needs some sort of Web presence. They may just need a functional way to let people know their address and menu, or they may want a more sophisticated marketing outreach, but online is certainly part of the equation. The problem is that most restaurateurs aren’t versed in Web design, and many don’t know exactly what they should be doing online and why…
Street Fight Daily: 05.10.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Foursquare and Google are joining forces to enable a trial of Foursquare checkins via near field communication (NFC). The test starts Tuesday at Google I/O, the annual developer conference in San Francisco. (Mashable)…
LocalResponse takes the location data from other services and combines it with implicit location information, gathered from status updates, to create a marketing platform that lets companies target consumers wherever they are in real time. (GigaOm)…
Atlanta Chef Reaches Diners on as Many Platforms as Possible
When he’s not in the kitchen at one of Atlanta’s top steakhouses, McKendrick’s Steakhouse executive chef Thomas Minchella is busy managing his restaurant’s Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare accounts, along with his personal social media accounts and a company blog. He aims to keep his messages authentic and can’t stand it when celebrity chefs hire outside companies to do their tweeting for them…
Webster Says Patch Must ‘Be the Community,’ Others Weigh In
This is a the third installment in a series about hyperlocal past and present. Read here about Digital City / AOL, CitySearch, and Microsoft’s Sidewalk…
I reached out to Warren Webster, President of AOL’s Patch network, the day before their big multi-thousand-blogger launch for thoughts on some of the views of the “Local 1.0” set discussed in the previous posts in this series. In an email he said: “It’s important to note that Patch isn’t citizen journalism. Patch is a platform staffed by professional journalists with an average of nine years experience. Patch also offers many opportunities for members of the community to have a voice on this platform — and for SMBs to drive consumer actions.”..
Street Fight Daily: 05.09.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Groupon is preparing to launch Groupon Now, a mobile app that will connect customers with real-time coupons for retailers in their vicinity. Tap the app’s “I’m hungry” button, and you might be offered a discount on a slice at a pizza parlor a few blocks away. But you’ll have to move fast: The deals will be time-sensitive and good for just a few hours. (CNN/Money)…
Lauren Fisher writes that “2011 could be the year that the check-in arrives, albeit differently to how we thought it might look.” (The Next Web)…
Five Elements of a Successful Hyperlocal Site
There are numerous places where local content producers can get advice about how to find the right groove with readers. Some have created guides to those businesses who have executed well, or “7 Habits” lists for successful hyperlocal sites. The folks at J-Lab did their own in-depth investigation into “what works” in hyperlocal journalism and came up with this, while a journalist across the pond takes a diplomatic view when considering hyperlocal content/news sites…