News and Analysis
#SFSNYC: Broadly CEO: Brick-and-Mortars Need to Become Messaging Centers
Phone calls and contact forms are dead, but what about websites? Not so much, said Josh Melick, CEO of Broadly, at Street Fight’s annual summit in New York Wednesday. With this trend showing no signs of stopping, websites—especially those of local businesses—need to become messaging centers.
#SFSNYC: The Growing Power of SMB OS
Until recently, brick-and-mortar shopping relied on the digital world for advertising functions and not much else. But now, local retail has a new digital arena—the full-service operating system. Three leaders in this expanding set of technological solutions for SMBs laid out the state of the field, known as SMB OS, at Street Fight Summit in New York Wednesday.
#SFSNYC: Making Conversational Interfaces the Frontline for Customer Interaction
The development of conversational language to interact with chatbots, digital assistants, smart devices, and other machines is changing the ways consumers make use of such platforms to find the information and services they want—and this change is only going to get more important for brands and local businesses to address.
Commentary
In Tomorrow’s Retail Universe, the Destination Is ‘You’
Based on clues we can see all around us, it is my belief that retail, as we’ve known it for at least the last two millennia, is coming to an end. It won’t end tomorrow or next week. In fact, it will likely take at least a decade or two. But it’s very clear to me that we are coming to a tipping point and data, processing power and connectedness lie at the center of it all…
The Web Isn’t a Local Broadcast Channel, It’s a Listening Post
Let legacy media be legacy media — but get used to the idea that, in a connected world, the ability to carve out new local news niches and profit centers is based, in large part, on our ability to listen. This is not a skill widely held among those who only “distribute,” but it’s one of the keys to a successful tomorrow in the network…
The Unique Position of Hyperlocal Publishers in a Real-Time Bidding World
RTB, by definition, is a digital advertising technology that lets marketers buy and publishers sell display ads dynamically, in real time, on an impression-by-impression basis. In this rapidly evolving world, publishers become relegated to a supply of cookies for marketers to target versus an audience targetable through the association of the publisher’s content and audience profiles. Here’s what’s needed for local publishers to unlock more ad inventory value in this environment…
Latest Posts
POS Startup Shows Cashiers Pictures of Customers Who Check-in
Revel Systems, a San Francisco-based company that makes point-of-sale software, will now notify businesses when someone has checked-in to their venue on Yelp or Foursquare. The feature offers a way to help businesses take a more proactive approach to engaging a vocal minority of users who actively share their opinions…
Unlocking the Power of Passive In-Store Data Analytics
In the world of indoor location analytics there are two types for data collection: active and passive. Retailers have embraced active data via apps and are now testing beacons — but they should also consider the value that passive location data brings to the overall understanding of consumer behavior in-store…
Street Fight Daily: Village Voice Nears Strike, eBay Kills Small Business Product
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…. Village Voice employees set strike deadline after negotiations break down (Poynter)… eBay Confirms Shutdown of Small-Business E-Commerce Software Products (Recode)… An Upper Limit For Apps? New Data Suggests Consumers Only Use Around Two Dozen Apps Per Month (TechCrunch)…
In OpenTable Deal, Signs of Deeper Convergence in Travel and Local
Two recent acquisitions by Priceline and TripAdvisor offer an early look into a logic that could drive a more comprehensive consolidation of the travel and local technology sectors. Many of the structures built to help visitors navigate new cities — and implicitly for marketers to reach tourists — might quickly become obsolete…
Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Gets Into Mobile Payments, Pandora’s Local Revenue
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Get Paid: GoDaddy Links With PayPal, Dwolla, Stripe For A Mobile & Web Payment Service (TechCrunch)… Pandora: More Than Half Our Revs Will Be Local In A Few Years (Marketing Land)… Taking Another Plunge into Digital News (USA Today)…
Street Fight Daily: Tech Helps Small Business, Inside Uber’s War Machine
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Startups’ Modern Tools Help Small Merchants Compete (New York Times)… Inside Uber’s Political War Machine (DailyBeast)… Airbnb CEO: Cities Are Becoming Villages (Atlantic)…
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