News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Sites Tap Audiences for Product Dev, Restaurants Court Young Customers
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Publishers Use Their Audiences to Develop Products… Casual Restaurant Chains Use Tech to Attract Elusive Younger Customers… Facebook Suspends Another Data Firm for Using Cambridge Analytica-Like Tactics…
Commentary
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…
The Role of Directories in the New Local Ecosystem
Marissa Mayer’s announcement that Yahoo would be moving its focus away from local search, along with some other significant factors in the developing local ecosystem, calls into question the continued viability of a robust marketplace of local directory and search sites. Here are a few harbingers of a potentially more consolidated future…
Place Off: A Week in the Life of the Mobile Local Revolution
A couple columns back, I covered the collision of big data, mobile and local (please refrain from acronyms… “BiDaLoMo”!). That covered some location analytics players like JiWire and Sense Networks. But since then, the action has picked up. In the last week alone, I’ve had in-depth conversations with others defining this space including Placed, PlaceIQ, and Telenav…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Eventbrite Hits $1 Billion, Clinkle’s Clunking Continues
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Eventbrite Tops Billion-Dollar Valuation With New Funding (Wall Street Journal)… Clinkle’s Still a Hot Mess as Its Big Shot COO Departs (Recode)… Israel’s Wix.com Buys Mobile Commerce Firm Appixia (Reuters)…
In ‘Smart Cities,’ A Sea Change for the Web
Over the past decade, a new vision of the future has emerged, in which mobility, and ubiquitous connectivity is actually drawing us back into the physical world. To accommodate the world’s rapid urbanization, a growing sector of tech companies are working to create new ways to make our cities smarter. Anthony Townsend, a senior research scientist at New York University, spoke to Street Fight recently about about the Smart City movement and the changing relationship the physical and digital worlds…
Can New Local Media Consortium Succeed Where Others Have Not?
For two decades, legacy media have tried to pool their threatened resources and capture digital ad revenue to replace the billions of dollars that stopped flowing to their newspapers and TV stations. They have had some successes, but their more ambitious digital partnerships haven’t fared well. Now, a new group of old-media companies have banded together to form the Local Media Consortium in the hopes that it will it be able to succeed where other tie-ups have not…
Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Launches Yelp Help, Retail’s Red Herring
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yahoo Launches Yelp Help in Search to Better Battle Google: Here’s What It Looks Like (Recode)… New Data Suggests “Showrooming” on Amazon Might Not be Killing Physical Retail After All (Pando)… Google Tests Desktop-to-Mobile Retargeting With Brand Data (AdAge)…
Why Mobile Marketing Needs to Evolve Past Physical Location
In order for location targeting to be effective, marketers must think beyond just physical location or proximity to their store. It means moving beyond the traditional mindset of ‘who’ you are trying to reach to include ‘where are they,’ ‘what are they doing,’ ‘what are their interests’ or even ‘what might their intentions be,’ based on past behavior…
Case Study: Hotel Chain’s Hyperlocal ‘Microsites’ Increase Online Bookings
Spurred by industry research showing that today’s travelers are more interested in creating memories than receiving discounts, Red Lion has launched a hyperlocal initiative that involves developing local “microsites” for each of the company’s hotel properties, along with localized menus, new transportation signage, and even employee nametags that offer localized tips for guests…
Street Fight Daily: Apple To Sharpen Maps, Consumer Concern Over Mobile Payments
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology….iOS 8 Said to Focus on Mapping, Transit and Augmented Reality (9to5Mac)… Consumers Wary of In-store Mobile Payments (Fixtera)… Microsoft Researchers Launch New Hyperlocal Project With a Twitter Connection (ZDNet)…
5 Tools for Targeting Customers Based On Their Historic Locations
Where consumers have been is just as important as where they’re going. Being able to track the historical — and in some cases, even future — locations of a consumer makes it possible for retailers and brands to strategically target mobile ads to the places where they know their customers are likely to be. Here are five tools that businesses can use to target customers based on where they’ve been…
Street Fight Daily: Twitter Tests Calls, A Deep Look at Uber
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Twitter Tries to Prove Its Ads Drive Sales with Click-to-Call (Digiday)… A Deeper Look at Uber’s Dynamic Pricing Model (Above the Crowd)… EBay Rejects Icahn board Nominees, Asks Investors to do Same (Reuters)…
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