Commentary
Selling Local Is Hard — Here’s What You Need to Do to Make It Work
For the past couple of months I’ve been testing a new targeted local online advertising product as part of my fellowship project at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute.The test has been essentially to sell the product to regional businesses within a given market. And at the end of the two-month trial, after calling on more than 150 businesses multiple times, I have a much greater appreciation not only for local salespeople but for the brands in the marketplace that can sell local…
What We Mean When We Talk About ‘Hyperlocal’
When we launched Street Fight, we expanded the term “hyperlocal” from its traditional use pertaining only to passionate, driven, highly local publishers who were the first to act on the erosion of local media’s business. We have applied it to include anyone who is disrupting and taking market share from traditional media and offering local businesses new ways to reach consumers…
The Local Conundrum: Rich Content or Accurate Information?
Google may have thought that situating local within Google+ would somehow obviate the need to fix it, but the presence of engaging content does nothing to modify the basic requirement that information services provide useful information. Perversely, information services spend too much time pretending they are content services but offer none of the openness of those services where it’s really needed…
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In Foursquare’s ‘Unbundling,’ Does the Tail Wag the Dog?
Foursquare announced plans Thursday to spin off the company’s trademark social networking service into a separate app and focus its branded application entirely on local search and discovery. The move — what the company has called ‘the unbundling’ — represents a pivotal adjustment by Foursquare to the sensitivities of a mainstream consumer in an increasingly connected real-world experience…
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Splits App, Groupon Goes After Costco
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Meet Swarm: Foursquare’s ambitious plan to split its app in two (Verge)… Groupon Goes After Costco And Sam’s Club With Groupon Basics, A Portal For Home Goods (TechCrunch)… Uber Gears up to Launch ‘Uber Family’ Service & Eyes a New Batch of Cities (VentureBeat)…
What Roadside Assistance Can Tell Us About the Future of Local Search
Urgently, a Washington D.C. startup, has built an application that allows drivers to request, and pay for, a nearby tow truck or automotive technician, and then track the provider as they come to their destination. The service is one of handful new companies, which are working to apply the on-demand model developed by the taxi hailing company Uber to a range of traditionally offline, and often backwater industries, like repair.
‘Baltimore Fishbowl’: One Story Behind ‘Optimistic’ New Revenue Numbers
A majority of independent community news sites are doing fine building revenue, according to Michele McLellan, author of Michele’s List, which tracks about 200 entrepreneurial community news sites around the country. To get at the “why” behind the numbers, I went to the founder of one of the best performing sites in the survey, three-year-old Baltimore Fishbowl…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s ‘Audience Network,’ Qualcomm Spins Off Beacon Business
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… With Ad Network, Facebook Targets Rest of Mobile World (AdAge)… Qualcomm Spins Off its Gimbal Bluetooth Beacon Biz Into a Separate Company (GigaOm)… Yext Acquires Software Consulting Firm Citrrus To Build Its Professional Services Team (TechCrunch)…
Five Trends That Will Shape the Future of Local Commerce
Two decades after the first ecommerce site, the commerce landscape has begun to shift again. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a resurgence in innovation around mobile as technology companies develop new ways to bridge the gap between ecommerce and offline spending. Here are five trends, which will shape the future of commerce over the next decade…
Relevant Content or Privacy? Choose Both
The challenge many publishers face is how to increase ad inventory value through personalized ads without exposing sensitive, personally identifiable data and violating user privacy. There are 3 main ways that publishers can extend their access to sharable, ad-request-friendly user data, but only one of them provides both consumer privacy and the ability to increase ad inventory value…
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