News and Analysis

6 Recruiting Platforms for the Marijuana Industry

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Cannabis startups are struggling to recruit job candidates who understand the cannabis market, which is opening the door to an entirely new vertical for technology firms with recruitment platforms. With the market itself still in its infancy, a handful of key players are vying to become the go-to recruiting sources for the cannabis industry as they work to match employers with job seekers who understand the state-by-state rules and regulations that govern the marijuana market.

Google Being Investigated for Antitrust Violations by Slew of States

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More than half of US state attorneys general are investigating Google for antitrust violations, the Washington Post reported. Officials anonymously told the Post that the probes are expected to be announced on Monday.

This marks a serious escalation in mostly recent government efforts to increase regulation of the giant tech firms that have become the most powerful private enterprises in the world, squashing competition in their home industries and disrupting adjacent ones. The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are already looking into the potentially anticompetitive power of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple.

Klos Founders See Opportunity in Social Messaging Market

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Like so many other startups, Klos is being marketed as a solution to a problem. In this case, the company’s founders see the problem as social media being inherently anti-social. Original broadcast sharing on legacy social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is on the decline. Messaging services like WhatsApp and iMessage are incredibly popular, but they don’t help people expand their social networks. While there are existing services, like Tinder and Bumble, that combine messaging and network expansion, they almost all fall into the dating app category.

Commentary

Frustration With Digital Marketing Vendors Boils Over for One SMB

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If it’s possible to distill the 30 million small business owners in the U.S. into a single persona, Marc Reisner strikes our columnists as a great candidate: “Marc has been disillusioned by past performance and that poor performance has understandably tarred the entire industry with the same brush.”

How Brands Can Find the ‘Advertisable Moments’ They’re Missing

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Advertisable moments exist in a range of digital and physical contexts beyond TV sets and even beyond desktop browsers — and if a brand wants to capitalize on all available moments (especially those proverbial micro-moments) it has to look for ad opportunities in unexpected places.

Are We on the Brink of a Retail Revolution?

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Revolutions often happen over short periods of time and leave death and carnage in their wake. What we are experiencing today in retail is more of an evolution — a sort of “survival of the fittest” as both local and big brand retailers either embrace shifting consumer shopping patterns or face extinction.

Latest Posts

Will an ‘Internet of People’ Threaten the On-Demand Heavies and Give Power to SMBs?

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Fermat wants to allow customers and small businesses (or people offering services) to talk directly to one another and pay for services using the likes of Bitcoin. As founder Luis Molina says: “Fermat aims to replace the ‘Sharing Economy,’ where powerful intermediaries extract significant value and information from every exchange.”

5 Platforms to Quickly Sell Overstocked Items

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When brick-and-mortar businesses have a surplus of inventory, they have a few options. For local merchants, deal-posting sites that use hyperlocal technology to target nearby consumers in real-time are becoming a popular solution.

Sponsored Post: How a Digital Agency is Key to SMB Marketing Success

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Sometimes local marketing moves to the back burner. The marketing industry moves quickly, and it’s often difficult to keep up with the shifts in consumer behavior, spending, technology, and effectiveness. Fifty-three percent of marketers admit that their primary challenge is the lack of resources and bandwidth needed to stay on top of localization strategies…

Street Fight Daily: Uber Taking Bids for Its Cloud Business, Google Launches Local News Tag

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Launches Local Source Tag to Help You See More Local News… Amazon to Launch a Blue Apron-Like Recipe Delivery Service This Fall… Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Might Be Going to War Over Uber’s Cloud Business…

The Real Problem With Duplicate Data

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Duplicate information — or information that is exactly like something else — isn’t the problem. The problem is publishing inconsistent data (or publishing two different listings) that are referencing the same location.

Case Study: Coffee Chain Tracks Service Levels with Mobile Messaging Tools

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For Philz Coffee, a “third-wave” coffee chain with a focus on drip coffee, customer service has become a differentiating factor. For more than three years, Philz has been working with hyperlocal vendor OwnerListens to collect valuable feedback from customers.

Spring Brand Battle: Jackson Hewitt vs. Liberty Tax

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Spring’s Brand Battle was the closest one yet with a spread of just four points overall. Local advertising and SEO strategies called the winner this month, and the losing contender would have had a better chance of overtaking its competition with more focus in those areas. Find out whether Jackson Hewitt or Liberty Tax Service earned a better return on local advertising effort!

Street Fight Daily: Groupon Sells Off Breadcrumb to Upserve, Google My Business API Updated

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Groupon Just Sold its Restaurant Software Business to Upserve… Google Updates the Google My Business API to Version 3.0… Uber and Lyft Threaten to Leave Austin After Prop 1 Loss…

Raise Report: New Funding for Via, Drivy, Home Chef

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Every two weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes new cash infusions for Bnbsitter, Passport and Trov.

Openings and New Hires at Empyr, Matchcraft, xAd and CBS Local

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Every two weeks, Geoff Michener covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. This week’s edition includes moves and new openings at Ninth Decimal, Factual, and Promoboxx.