Street Fight Daily: Comcast Reviving Everyblock, DeliveryHero Raises $350M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Comcast Bets on Hyperlocal by Reviving EveryBlock (Washington Post)… Delivery Hero, Hungry For Growth, Orders Up Another $350M In Funding (TechCrunch)… Nokia Plans to Unfurl New Mobile Map App (Wall Street Journal)…
Street Fight Daily: Amazon’s ‘Showrooming’ Phone, Is Uber Worth $17 Billion?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon’s Fire Phone Introduces Firefly, A Feature That Lets You Identify (And Buy!) Things You See In The Real World (TechCrunch)… Uber Isn’t Worth $17 Billion (FiveThiryEight)… How Pinterest Tapped World Cup Enthusiasm with Place Pins (Fast Company)…
At Mindbody, a Lesson in Focus
After a decade with little outside capital, MindBody has raised over $110 million dollars in the past four years to compete with the likes of Square and a deluge of smaller entrants. Street Fight recently caught up with the company’s founder Rick Stollmeyer to talk about the blurring line between marketing and operations, and what the explosion of local technology today spells for small businesses tomorrow…
Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Preps IPO, JustEat Eyes London Markets
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… GoDaddy Prepares for IPO (Wall Street Journal)… Just Eat Preps IPO In London, Aiming To Raise £100M (TechCrunch)… CMO One-to-One: LivingSocial Evolves from Deals Site to Deals Marketplace (eMarketer)…
In Yelp Earnings, No Sign of the ‘Mobile Gap’
Yelp posted stronger than expected earnings on Thursday, sending shares up nearly 10% in after hours trading — a fitting coda to a banner year for the firm on Wall Street. Shares of Yelp more than tripled in 2013, driven in part by rapid international expansion, a burgeoning local ad market in the U.S., and well-received strategic initiatives…
With Perfect Information, Does ‘Awareness’ Becomes Obsolete?
In a world in which information is finite and often inaccessible, the ability for a business to be top of mind — to carve out a little spot in a consumer’s memory — was a powerful competitive advantage, and one that drove the way businesses sold goods and services to local consumers. But thanks to the rapid adoptions of mobile devices by consumers and the emergence of inexpensive cloud-based operations software, that’s changing…
Why HouseCall Thinks Taxi Apps Are Just The Tip Of The Iceberg
Last year, four engineers from Qualcomm, who were responsible for the company’s location sensor product Gimbal, left the company to start HouseCall, a system that helps users find and book local providers who service home-related projects like plumbing or audio/visual installation. The company has built a similar marketplace model as Seamless in the food delivery sector, providing enterprise software for free to merchants and then selling leads generated by its consumer product…
Street Fight Daily: Uber’s Financials Leaked, Intuit Buys Docstoc
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Leaked: Uber’s Internal Revenue and Ride Request Numbers (ValleyWag)… Intuit Acquires Docstoc To Broaden Its Offering To The Smallest Of Small Businesses (AllThingsD)… NSA Tracking Cellphone Locations Worldwide, Snowden Documents Show (Washington Post)…
Mobile Payments Startup Flint Raises $6 Million in Series B Round
Flint wants to tap into local commerce by bringing payment processing, and basic marketing capabilities, to mobile — without a dongle. The Redwood-based company announced a $6 million series B round of funding at Street Fight Summit this morning to expand its solution, led by Digicel Group with additional funding from SVG Venture…
Why It’s So Hard to Create Marketplaces for Local Commerce
Recognizing the success of Uber, startups and incumbents alike rushed to replicate the company’s model in other verticals, developing new products to help business and consumers buy and sell local services like car repair, house cleaning, and haircuts. MyTime, the 9-month old project launched by RedBeacon founder Ethan Anderson, is one of these and is staying the course. When I spoke with Anderson last week, he outlined a few key strategic decisions and clever hacks, which have helped the company get some early traction for its marketplace..
Chart: The Local Marketing Landscape
The shift from print to digital is old news, but what’s shaking up the industry is the introduction of cloud-based business management systems — for everything from payments and point-of-sale to schedule — into the marketing mix. Marketers can write algorithms to connect supply and demand, automating the way businesses and consumers interact locally. Yelp meets Booker. Facebook meets OpenTable. These combinations will bring together consumer data from every stage of the purchase funnel, automate marketing plans and messaging, and reduce implementation and sales costs for both marketers and solutions providers…
The Local Conference You Don’t Want to Miss
It’s that time of year again when the most exciting companies in local gather in New York City to hash through and celebrate the best ideas and strategies. Street Fight Summit is coming next Thursday and Friday to TriBeCa, and one of the themes we’re focusing on this year is partnerships. Partnerships are a key reason we have been bringing people together for the last few years, but never have they been such a high-profile, essential element of success as they have become over the past year…
With Strong Earnings, Yelp Nears Profitability
The reviews site brought in $55 million in revenue during the quarter on a $878,000 loss, the closest the company has come to run-rate profitability since going public. The results come on the heels of a busy past few weeks for the company as it began to stake its position in a local market that’s increasingly shifting toward commerce technologies…
Hyperlocal Industry Leaders to Gather in NYC on Oct. 24-25
Street Fight, the leading voice of the hyperlocal industry, will host its third annual Street Fight Summit in New York in October, bringing together decision makers and influencers from key areas of local marketing and commerce. Topics will focus on the most dynamic areas of hyperlocal, such as indoor targeting, mobile payments, hyperlocal advertising models, and local commerce strategies…
Yelp Presses Into Commerce With New Local Delivery Product
Yelp launched a new product Tuesday that will allow customers to order food from participating merchants directly through its site or its mobile app. The move marks a seminal point in the company’s history, as the local discovery firm transitions from an information provider to an integrated local commerce service…
ReachLocal CEO: Commerce Solutions Becoming Alternatives to Local Search
Whereas most companies have built either a consumer-brand or a back-end for merchants, the company has spun out a SaaS tool, ReachCommerce, from its branded ClubLocal platform. Street Fight recently caught up with Zorik Gordon, ReachLocal’s chief executive, to talk about the origins of the new project, the challenges with bring local services online, and the impact a shift from advertising to commerce might have on local search companies like Yelp…
VIDEO: The Pains and Promise of an ‘Amazon’ for Local Services
As investors continue to pour funding into the local services space, the competition over one of the last white spaces of the consumer web is heating up. During a session at Street Fight Summit West earlier this month in San Francisco, Ethan Anderson, founder at booking service MyTime, and Booker CEO Josh McCarter debated the dynamics of building an “Amazon for local services”…
In Search of the Checkout Pixel for Local
Until recently, the “last mile” offline had been considered the most challenging step to solve for. But today, it’s increasingly where most of the action is happening. Consideration starts online, but picking up the sushi or the TV, or getting the bridal party fitted, occurs offline — and that involves not just more steps, but also more room for attribution. What was opaque previously is now fertile ground. The race is underway to plant flags at every step and, to make things interesting, with each flag planted consumer behavior is changing…