News and Analysis
After Nearly Two Years in the Hot Seat, Facebook Feels the Burn
In its Q2 earnings report, the social giant reported that growth has stalled in the United States and Canada, its most valuable markets. And its overall user growth for the quarter of just 22 million users is the smallest jump since 2011, indicating that a slowdown in revenue growth will likely prove a long-term challenge in the years ahead.
Commentary
Why ‘Google My Business’ Helps, But Doesn’t Fix, Local for SMBs
The company’s redesign of its SMB portal replaces both the old Google Places for Business interface and the equivalent within Google+, and consolidates several features into a friendlier interface. The features for the most part are not new, but the update does a good job of tying together the claiming and profile management process with Google+ sharing…
Mobile’s Increasingly Strong Influence in Consumer Purchase Decisions
The third annual installment of the xAd/Telmetrics Mobile Path-to-Purchase study shows that mobile is a powerful force throughout the consumer purchase cycle. Consumers are spending more research time on their mobile devices than on their PCs, and more than one-third of mobile users use their devices exclusively to research purchases…
Latest Posts
From Print to Patch to His Own ‘Indie’ Site — A 25-Year Saga
Steven Jack, who was regional editor for eight Patch sites before leaving in the first round of layoffs, did what many of his terminated colleagues did — he started his own independent site. In less than a year, he has captured 31,000 unique visitors for his Only Oswego, which more than equals the town’s population…
Street Fight Daily: Angie’s List Shuffles Brass, Amazon’s One-Hour Delivery
\A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Amazon Brings One-Hour Delivery To NYC With Prime Now (TechCrunch)… Angie’s List Shuffles Brass, Names Third Tech Chief In Two Years (Indianapolis Business Journal)… Like Tinder, But For Creative Professionals: How Thumbtack Is Remaking The Gig Economy (Fusion)…
Serviz CEO: Uber-like Service Providers Will Begin to Displace Local Search
The on-demand service spun out from ReachLocal has snagged another $12.5 million in funding to expand beyond Los Angeles, adding to $2.5 million raised earlier this year. We spoke with CEO Zorik Gordon to talk about the investment climate for local commerce and the implications of these innovations for the local search community…
Can Mobile Help TV Networks Track In-Store Visits? PlaceIQ Thinks So
Among the various media, television has remained relatively unaffected by the Internet. Marketers still spend billions on television advertising, and brands expect little measurement or performance in return. But that’s changing, and the big advertisers — often, the large retailers who sell mostly offline — now increasingly want proof of value…
Street Fight Daily: Samsung’s Apple Pay Competitor, Foursquare Partners With Twitter
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…… Samsung in Talks to Launch Apple Pay Competitor (Recode)… Twitter And Foursquare Are Partnering To Improve Location In Tweets (Business Insider)… Next for Yext? Digital Presence Service Buys Dutch Startup InnerBalloons (Recode)…
New Report Suggests Brands Remain Ambivalent About Local Search
A new Forrester report suggests that a large swath of national marketers still struggle to understand the role of local search in a national marketing strategy. The complexity of the local search industry, the report argues, has created unnecessary barriers for large marketers to invest in both paid and organic search initiatives…
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