News and Analysis
Uber Pledges to Fight California Contractor Bill
Uber and Lyft are already losing billions of dollars, and long-term concerns about whether they will ever hit profitability have endured, making for relatively weak runs on the public market. If the companies cannot come close to profitability with cheap labor forces without benefits, having to treat drivers as employees could pose an existential threat. At the very least, it may require Uber and Lyft to slow down expansion and rein in their ambitions, suggesting that the heyday (or hallucinatory days) of Web 2.0 could be coming to a close.
5 Cannabis Payroll Platforms
Growers, dispensaries, and other businesses that operate in the legal cannabis industry are caught between federal and state regulations, which make banking and payroll a challenge. Despite marijuana being legal in many states, cannabis businesses are still on shaky ground at the federal level, and banks in particular are skittish about partnering with the industry. Without solid banking partners, local cannabis businesses can have trouble keeping up on payroll. So what’s the solution?
Rather than waiting for Congress to make a decision on potential regulations that would shield banks from federal punishment for maintaining accounts for cannabis businesses, more dispensaries and growers are moving toward using web-based cannabis payroll platforms designed specifically for their industry.
Hyperlocal Social Firm Nextdoor Closes $170M Round, Adds Meeker to Board
The company seems well positioned to address the ills of social network and platforms plagued by negative user-generated content in general these days. That’s because it actually verifies the identities of its users and puts people in touch who live near each other in the physical world, definitely not eliminating all risk but limiting the chance that people use digital anonymity to harass each other without repercussions.
Commentary
Cutting Through the Crowds at Festivals: How Brands Can Reach Summer Groupies
When fans use their mobile phones to travel to or around a festival, or when contacting their friends on-site, they’re giving brands valuable information about where they are and what they like. And if advertisers know how to capitalize on this data, they’ll be able to identify and reach their ideal audiences.
Latest Posts
#SFSW16 VIDEO: Rethinking Restaurants — Local Tech Remakes an Industry
Restaurants are a particularly large and important vertical in local, and as such they’ve long been a testing ground for a variety of digital products. Now a new generation of companies is starting to use local marketing and delivery services to rethink what a restaurant is and how we think about our dining experiences.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Canvas Ads Flourish, Google Tests Click-to-SMS Extension
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook’s Genre-Bending Canvas Ads Demonstrate the Social Network’s Strength… Startup Challenges Uber, Lyft with Lower Fares, Higher Driver Commissions… Search Ad Decline Report May Explain Google’s Friday Stock Drop…
5 Locally-Focused Meal-Kit Delivery Vendors
Meal-kit delivery services are a segment of the food market that’s expected to grow to between $3 and $5 billion over the next decade. Companies deliver individually wrapped ingredients, along with plain-simple recipes, to their customers’ doors for a premium price. Here are five examples of meal-kit vendors taking a localized approach.
Targeted Ads Can Miss Targets — But They Still Keep Coming
Over the past few weeks, I’ve received a barrage of ads for storage centers in St. Louis despite the fact that I live in South Carolina. I’m also seeing ads reminding me to “finish your trademark” event though I’m not interested in trademarking anything. I asked experts about why mis-targeted (and wasteful) ads like these persist, and what the ad industry is doing about them.
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Street Fight Categories
The Road Ahead: What Autonomous Cars Teach Us About Marketing Automation