News and Analysis

SMB Index Declines Slightly Over the Course of a Volatile June

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June was a volatile month in the public markets, which saw the SurePath SMB Index give back 1.1%, after climbing 7.9% in May. Web.com led last month’s winners, leading the index with 31.5% growth in market cap following news of an acquisition offer.

In Case You Missed It: Facebook Axed a Post on This Founding U.S. Document Last Week

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The anniversary of its home country’s birth was not without incident for Facebook, which attracted attention for automatically striking down a post, flagged as hate speech, containing the words of the Declaration of Independence.

Google Faces Heat After Automated Threat to Shut Down a Cloud Client’s Project

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This week’s tech giant in hot water? Google, whose abuse-prevention system apparently shut down and threatened to delete a Cloud client’s project in three days due to perceived misdoing on the client’s part.

Commentary

Could Simple Website Builders Be the Next Hyperlocal Superstars?

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Where is the next billion-dollar opportunity in hyperlocal? You might be surprised by the likely answer. Assuming they play their cards right, simple website builders like Wix, Weebly or Squarespace — and not the traditional hyperlocal platforms — have the best shot…

As Digital Media Gets ‘Horizontal,’ It Acts More Like Local Businesses

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Local businesses are the most suited to life in the networked world, because they already deal with people directly, and often on a first-name basis. To the extent that local businesses have learned to do this, they can teach the rest of the business world how to behave in our increasingly collaborative environment…

Mobile Is Huge — But Two Key Elements Could Slow Its Growth

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We in the media think we’re in the information business, when the reality is that we’re very much in the advertising business, and advertising is in disruption right now. In their effort to influence and produce results, marketers are simply unable to demonstrate even a modicum of restraint when it comes to the line between useful and nuisance.

Latest Posts

How Y Combinator Grad Estimote Plans to Turn Beacons Into a Big Business

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When Estimote graduated from Y Combinator in July of 2013, the startup was riding one of the hottest trends in tech: beacons. By the end of the year, the company had raised $3.1 million to turn its fist-sized adhesive proximity beacons into an “operating system for the physical world.”

Street Fight Daily: eBay Spins Off PayPal, Waze Crowdsources Places

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology]EBay to Spin Off PayPal With New CEOs for Two Publicly Traded Companies (Recode)… With Places (and Your Help), Waze Mapping Gets Smarter On Android And iOS (GigaOm)… Yelp and Tripadvisor Launch Joint Campaign Against Google (Financial Times)…

Millennial SVP: A ‘Broad Evolution’ Beyond Geo-Fencing Coming in Mobile

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Street Fight recently caught up with Matt Tengler, SVP of product at Millennial Media, to talk about the way in which location figured into the company’s strategy, the impact location data could have on the broader digital advertising marketplace, and whether small business matters (yet) in mobile advertising.

Is Apple Pay Fixing a Problem Consumers Don’t Have?

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Paying with a credit card isn’t broken. So mobile payments have to offer something greater than reducing my wallet by the atomic weight of a credit card. We’re talking tangible benefits like skipping store lines, saving time, or monetary rewards. Without these benefits, I don’t see how the masses will be compelled to change such an entrenched habit…

Street Fight Daily: SK Telecom Buys Shopkick, Facebook Launches Atlas

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologySK Telecom Agrees to Acquire Shopkick (Wall Street Journal)… With New Ad Platform, Facebook Opens Gates to Its Vault of User Data (New York Times)… OpenTable CEO on How Its Game Changes Within Priceline (Skift)…

Openings and New Hires at YP, Hailo, Google, and LivingSocial

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Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, new jobs and hires at Advance Visibility, Hearst, Cross-Post, Placed and more…

Why Marketers Need to Consider Context — Not Just Audience

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In a Street Fight webinar Tuesday sponsored by Skyhook Wireless, Aaron Strout of marketing agency W20 Group and Skyhook’s Mike Schneider discussed the growing role of contextual targeting, and outlined a few steps that brands can use to create meaningful mobile experiences. …

LBMA Podcast: Google Outside, Urban Airship, and Thinknear’s Eli Portnoy

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On the show: Geotargeted ads to help The Times Newseum; Weve is dead; Pigeonly’s Photopigeon; MoodMedia rolls out presence; and the strategy behind Macy’s committing 4000 stores to Shopkick…

Street Fight Daily: FiveStars Raises $26M, Postal Service Eyes Grocery Delivery

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyFivestars Raises $26m to Build Up its Digital Loyalty Program (GigaOm)… Postal Service Seeks to Extend Grocery Deliveries (Wall Street Journal)… The Newsonomics of Auctioning Off Digital First’s Newspapers (Nieman Journalism Lab)…

Will Local Media Consortium Save Lee From Knife’s Edge?

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Lee Enterprises is meeting its Chapter 11 debt obligations, recently stretched out debt payments at lower interest, and has cut expenses by $285 million — albeit at cost to editorial quality at the local and community levels. But with the company likely having done much of the cost cutting available, the pressure is on to keep increasing digital ad revenues…