News and Analysis

Survey: 72% of Shoppers Use Online Reviews to Judge Local Businesses

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A survey by Netsertive found that 72% percent of consumers use online reviews to evaluate local businesses and eight-in-10 always research big items online before making their purchases in-store.

Street Fight Daily: Instagram Creeps Into Payments, Reviews Shape Local Offline Purchases

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Instagram Quietly Launches Payments for Commerce… Augmented Reality Heading to 3 Billion Devices, $85 Billion in Revenue… Yelp’s Chad Richard on the ‘Decentralization’ of Reservations…

Retailers Use AI for In-Store Experimentation, Customer Service

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Brick-and-mortar retailers are looking for an edge in their fight against the e-commerce behemoths, and as the battle rages on, it’s looking like artificial intelligence might be the answer.

Commentary

Local Mapping Services and the Public Trust

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The towering presence of Google in the mapping world today is testament to its success in product development, but this also indicates something else. People don’t just think of maps as a product to be consumed. It seems that we have begun to consider mapping services as a public trust…

Why the Future of SMB-Focused Applications Is Mobile

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Although most SMB-focused applications are now web-based, the rising adoption of the smartphone as the de facto dashboard for small business owners will drive a wave of mobile applications customized for them…

Local TV Stations: The Sleeping Beasts in Hyperlocal News

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Resting on the laurels of legacy profits only gets you so far. Just ask newspaper publishers. When you really take a good look at the local television business, it’s clear this is an industry waiting to be disrupted — and when that happens, outlets that haven’t invested sufficiently in digital won’t have much to hold onto…

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s ‘Nearby Friends,’ Twitter Debuts App Promo Suite

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologynearby-friendsFacebook’s “Nearby Friends” Feature Aims for More Offline Connections (Recode)… Twitter’s New Ad Unit Is A Huge, Huge Deal. Here’s Why (Forbes)… Citymapper Just Got Off the Funding Bus and Is Now $10M Richer (VentureBeat)…

LBMA Podcast: Mahana’s Brian Menell and Richard Bagdonas

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Top stories of the week include Quantum Dots, Apple, the Lego Movie, American Express, Amazon’s Dash, Tesco, Uber’s Rush, Breeze, Santa Monica’s Wellbeing Project, Traffle’s travel app and SmartMat.

Recent Studies Show Mobile’s Broadening Reach

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The reports underline what we might call the inherently local nature of mobile search. Whether you are in a store contemplating a high-ticket purchase or downtown hoping to discover a new restaurant, the phone in your hand is your portal to timely and actionable information as well as marketing incentives that are increasingly likely to gain your attention…

Case Study: Frozen Yogurt Chain Integrates Payments Into Mobile App

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No clear frontrunner has shown up in the mobile wallet space, and businesses like Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt are tired of waiting for one to appear. Instead of utilizing an existing mobile payment platform, the frozen yogurt chain is rolling out its own mobile wallet as part of an update to its iPhone and Android app. When its mobile payments solution debuts this summer, Orange Leaf customers will be able to pay for purchases with their smartphones at the POS…

Street Fight Daily: LevelUp Eyes ‘Zero Interchange,’ Zuckerberg on Graph Search

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologylevelupLevelUp Thinks It Has Found A Way To Charge Merchants A 0% Credit Card Processing Fee (Business Insider)… Zuckerberg: Facebook Graph Search Is ‘A Five-Year Thing’ (SearchEngineLand)… Seamless Delivers Tips Agreement (WSJ)…

In Run-Up to IPO, Yodle Makes Its Bet on Local Marketing Automation

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Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that local marketing firm Yodle was shopping for banks to underwrite a potential public offering. In an interview with Street Fight, Court Cunningham, chief executive at Yodle, declined to comment on the reports, but talked about the the evolution of the small business marketing space, the rise of local marketing automation, and the subsequent push by these companies to bundle services into an integrated product…

Microsoft Research Project Tells You What a Neighborhood Is Thinking

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HereHere, which launched earlier this year, profiles the 42 neighborhoods in New York City by collecting publicly available 311 data to reveal the most talked-about issues in the boroughs. By entering their zip code, a user can interact with an animated map displaying the neighborhood’s statuses, seeing updates like “delighted” or “uncomfortable.”

Street Fight Daily: Twitter Buys Gnip, Google Developing Microcamera Contact Lens

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologygnip_1x1Twitter Embraces Its Data and Buys Gnip (GigaOm)… Google’s Microcamera Contact Lens Is Coming to an Eyeball Near You (Time)… Seeking Growth, The Payments Industry Embraces New Technologies (TechCrunch)…

Facebook’s Levy: ‘No Singular Event’ Triggered Decline in Businesses’ Organic Reach

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According to multiple reports, the social networking company has “slashed organic page reach,” reducing the number of users which can see a business’s photos, posts, and updates. In a wide ranging interview with Street Fight, Dan Levy, director of small business at Facebook, talks about the decline organic reach for businesses, the evolving relationship between marketer and consumer, and the company’s unique challenge of managing 25 million business clients…

7 Tools for Re-activating Dormant Customers

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The cost of acquiring a new customer is five times higher than the cost to keep an existing one, which is one of the reasons why businesses of all sizes are beefing up their loyalty programs and using social media to keep fans engaged. But what about customers who’ve fallen off the bandwagon — those whose accounts have gone dormant after not coming in for a period of weeks or months?