News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Voice Disrupts Local News Delivery, Grocers Partner with Meal Kits
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Listen Up! Voice Makes Itself Heard in Delivery of Local News… As Grocery Shopping Evolves, Supermarkets Partner with Meal Kit Services… Apple’s App Store Privacy Crackdown May Hurt Facebook’s Onavo…
Commentary
Why Cars Could Be the Next Big Platform for Local Search
Amid praise and criticism of the flatter design of Apple’s newest mobile operating system, the company quietly introduced a potentially transformative feature in iOS7: iOS in the Car. Pedestrian-friendly cities like New York and San Francisco may prove a fertile breeding grounds for local discovery apps like Foursquare, but it’s the suburban car-bound consumer that presents the biggest opportunity for local technology companies today, including …
The Good and Bad of Local Discovery on Our Summer Road Trip
Greetings from a summer road trip in the Pacific Northwest. Amid games of twenty questions and alphabet animals, we have faced the typical needs of the traveler: shelter, food, gas, and fun. Naturally, we’ve turned to local search, just like the other 31% of leisure travelers (up from 18% in 2010). I’ve written mainly about local search on the homefront and travel is another kind of use case entirely, one that in many ways has been “solved” by existing services — but has it? In our experience, you often have to be creative to get what you need…
Everybody Is a Media Company, So Now What?
The explosive growth of personal media has disrupted everything it touches. The same inexpensive tools that consumers are now using are also available to any-sized businesses, which has the potential of entirely leveling the playing field in consumer goods and services by driving down the cost of marketing. The neighborhood doughnut shop can just as easily make and distribute media as the Kroger Bakery up the street or, by God, even Walmart. We may chuckle today but just wait…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare’s New App, Facebook Ads Costlier for SMBs
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Can Foursquare Crack Local Search? (New York Times)… Facebook Ads Become ‘Costlier’ Choice for Small Businesses (Wall Street Journal)… Yelp Lied About Review Policies to Inflate Stock Price, Lawsuit Claims (GigaOm)…
Hyperlocal Companies Among 500 Startups’ Latest Batch
Silicon Valley seed fund 500 Startups has announced a new round of startups it will be helping navigate through the tough road to sustainable profitability — and they include a number of brand new companies in local commerce, marketing, and tech. Here are a few interesting hyperlocally focused companies from the latest batch…
5 Pet Sitting Marketplaces in the ‘Sharing Economy’
Americans spent more than $55 billion on their pets in 2013, and a number of hyperlocal startups are looking to capture that puppy fever by creating local marketplaces where pet owners are matched up with people who are willing to take care of their pups while they’re out of town. Here are five hyperlocal pet sitting marketplaces getting in on the action…
Street Fight Daily: Shoppers Flee Stores, Gannett Splits Digital Business
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Shoppers Are Fleeing Physical Stores (Wall Street Journal)… Gannett To Split Print and Broadcast/Digital Divisions (New York Times)… Facebook’s New Video Ads Aren’t Ready for Small Businesses — Yet (Recode)…
As Losses Widen, Groupon Struggles to Redefine Itself
Groupon said Tuesday that losses widened in the second quarter as marketing and sales costs jumped but gross profit remained flat. The culprit, a far less profitable ecommerce business than anticipated, accounted for every dollar of the company’s top-line growth as it struggles to find new footing for its sluggish local deals business…
How the Former CEO of Digg Plans to Win in Local
Earlier this year, Matt Williams, the former CEO of Digg and an Amazon vet, hooked up with a few other former Amazonians to found Pro.com, a local services marketplace that raised $3.5 million from investors that include their former boss Jeff Bezos. Street Fight caught up with him recently to talk about what local can learn from the early days of ecommerce…
Street Fight Daily: Gannett to Buy Rest of Cars.com, Square Adds Food Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Gannett Said Near Deal to Buy Rest of Cars.com for $1.8 Billion (New York Times)… As Competitors Close In, Square Moves Beyond the Credit Card (Wired)… Picking Through Google’s Pigeon Droppings (SearchEngineLand)…
Mobile Local Apps: To Bundle or Not to Bundle
Facebook last week made the contentious move to force its iPhone and Android app users to “fast switch” to the Messenger app for all future messaging. The outcome will be worth watching for anyone developing mobile apps. Local media players are increasingly faced with decisions about app functionality. That includes whether to unbundle features to specialized apps (think gas prices), or to federate within one…
From Ad Biz to Hyperlocal: Duo Takes Flyer in Fayetteville, Profitably
Today’s digital community news publisher-editors are increasingly likely not to have had experience working for traditional journalism outlets. But that hasn’t prevented them from making their mark — even when they’re competing against platforms that have strong print resources. That’s the case for Todd Gill and Dustin Bartholomew, co-founders of the seven-year-old independent Fayetteville (Ark.) Flyer. In this Q & A, Gill tells how he and Bartholomew achieved success in a market with a major print and digital daily newspaper…
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