Commentary
Patch CCO Talks Election Coverage: Virtual News Teams, Trending Hashtag
The election was a big national story, but it was also an important local story — and served as yet another crucible to test how deeply hyperlocal network Patch has woven itself into the 850+ communities it serves across the country. Rachel Feddersen, Patch’s Chief Content Officer, spoke with Street Fight this week about how the network approached and executed its election coverage, and what potential lessons the event had for the rest of the news cycle.
Memo to Google: Solve the Local Data Problem With Local Data
I think we can now state definitively that the big upsurge in claimed listings that might have occurred as a result of Google’s choice to embed local listings within its social network, a little over five months ago, will not happen on its own. Rather than achieving Facebook levels of adoption, Google+ Local is still an arena where participation depends heavily on early adopters as well as the assistance of local SEO consultants and companies like mine…
As Paywalls Evolve, So Does the Perception of Paywalls
It’s time to acknowledge that, overall, people are starting to get used to paying for content online — especially on smartphones and tablets. It will be interesting to see how the various paywall models play out over time, but I have become more confident that paywalls (in some form or fashion) are a piece of the puzzle to running a profitable hyperlocal or regional news website…
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Street Fight Daily: Sprint Eyes Small Business, PayPal Tracks In-Store Visits
Probabilistic Device Matching Isn’t Perfect — But It Works
The use of probabilistic matching or statistical IDs to link multiple devices to an individual is often dismissed based on dubious accuracy. It’s true that the practice will never be 100% accurate, but even taking the conservative estimate at the lower end of this range, probabilistic matching enables marketers to scale their mobile advertising campaigns with reasonable expectations of performance…
Discovering Common Ground Among ‘Indie’ and Corporate Hyperlocal Sites
The digital Grand Canyon that has divided independent and corporate hyperlocal news sites is not looking so immense lately. The “indies” and the corporates are still kicking up a lot of dust in their community-by-community competition. But these rivals are changing their operations and strategies in ways that make them look more alike than different…
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Partners With YP, Airbnb’s $10B Valuation
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yelp, YP Partner in Local Advertising Deal (SearchEngineLand)… New Capital Could Raise Airbnb Value To $10 Billion (New York Times)… The Newsonomics of Selling Cars.com (Nieman Journalism Lab)…
Finding the Right Point of Contact At: A Franchise Organization
Crafting the perfect pitch is only part of the challenge. For hyperlocal vendors trying to generate traction in a crowded marketplace, being able to locate the best point of contact at each of the individual companies being pitched is an incredibly important part of the sales process. Here are four strategies for finding the right person to pitch at a franchise organization, from hyperlocal executives who’ve had success…
What Real-Time Computing Means for Local Commerce
Earlier this month, SAP, the german business software giant, announced that it plans to put a version of its real-time analytics software Hana online. The computing platform is one of a number of new analytics products that use so-called in-memory processing — a reference to a computer’s temporary, or working memory — to rapidly analyze vast amounts of data in an instant, allowing businesses to draw insights and make decisions in a matter of milliseconds…
Street Fight Daily: Mobile Search Explodes, Facebook Ends the Free Ride
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… In 2013 Mobile Search Exploded but the Dollars Haven’t Followed Suit (Yet) (Pando)… Facebook Is Ending the Free Ride (ValleyWag)… Foursquare CEO: Google and Yelp are ‘Incredibly Broken’ (VentureBeat)…
Is Facebook Paper the Wake-up Call Publishers Need?
Media companies and publishers need to take a page from Facebook and other fast-moving digital properties. These digital entities are giving readers what they want while using what they know about users to “make a killing” with ads. Publishers who were virtually sidelined by these digital powerhouse companies can now get back in the game by adopting a Zuckerberg move: creating the right conditions and culture…
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