News and Analysis

SMB Index: In a Bad Month for Public Equity Markets, Local Isn’t Spared

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March saw big declines in the public equity markets. The SCP SMB Index was the least impacted, retreating 4.1% compared to all other major indices, which declined more than 5% during the month.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Scandal’s Impact on Local, Retailers Hesitate on Amazon Ads

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Apocalypse? What to Monitor… SMB Index: In a Bad Month for Public Equity Markets, Local Isn’t Spared… Some Retailers Averse to Advertising on Amazon…

Street Fight Daily: Sites Tap Audiences for Product Dev, Restaurants Court Young Customers

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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

How Siri Works and Why It Matters for Local

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It’s pretty clear that Siri’s interpreter can examine a spoken query for syntax and keywords in order to trigger what it thinks is the most relevant web service. Often when Siri gets it wrong, this is because it has made a mistake about which service to call. In my experience, Siri is somewhat over-eager to assume you want local businesses when you say a word that sounds like a product or service category…

Waze Highlights Inconsistencies in Local Data

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There are too many different ways to categorize businesses, and none of them represents a unified standard for online search. Such a standard if widely implemented would make all businesses categorized as grocery stores line up neatly with each other and would provide a significant boost in overall relevancy…

Hyperlocal Online Ads Are About to Get a Lot Bigger — Billboard-Sized

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The next time you are in your doctor’s office, at the mall or at the local sports arena, the ad that you see on a plasma TV display or a digital kiosk could have been purchased and placed there using the same type of system advertisers are using today to buy and place online display ads…

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Cars.com on the Block, Lyft Raises $150M

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyNewspaper Consortium Seeks to Sell Cars.com for $3 Billion (Wall Street Journal)… Lyft Funding Official: Documents Filed for New $150 Million Round (Recode)… TripAdvisor Plans Mbile Travel Guide Features in the Face of Competition From Rivals like Foursquare and Google Now (TheNextWeb)…

Control Group, a Dev Shop for the Real World, Rethinks Subway Navigation

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The agency is one of a handful of development and marketing companies to carve out a niche in bringing the web to the physical world. These companies are helping retailers, restaurants and a range of other organizations with a stake in a physical place to use connectivity to rethink the way we engage with the world around us…

LBMA Podcast: Square, LevelUp, and Thinknear’s Eli Portnoy

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Top stories of the week include Square and Bookfresh, CommuteStream, LevelUp and Foodler, Muber, SounderPoster 3.0, Amtrak, Caribou Coffee, IMGuest.com, Mastercard and Syniverse and Stylinity…

Street Fight Daily: Staples Ditches Bricks, Flickr Founder Goes Hyperlocal

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyStaples to Close 225 Stores as Sales Move Online (New York TimesS)… Flickr Co-Founder Seeks Another Hit With New Findery App (Reuters)… Yahoo Rolling Out Indoor Maps (SearchEngineLand)…

New Patch Owner Hale Running Company in ‘Lean, Entrepreneurial Mode’

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“There are lots of potential models, and there’s no reason to be ideological about finding the right match between models and communities,” says Hale. “The best thing for hyperlocal journalism is a sustainable business model.”

In the Age of Big Data, Sometimes a Phone Call Still Works Best

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More and more, marketers are turning to deep data analytics to measure the impact relative to a local marketing campaign. But call measurement provider Telmetrics says that value can still be delivered by paying attention to a more basic form of interaction: phone calls…

Street Fight Daily: Google Kills Offers, Foursquare Reveals Revenues

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyGoogle Shuts Down Self Serve Offers Product (Blumenthals)… Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, Rebuffing Sale Offers, Says Revenues Grew 500% in Q1 2014, 600% In 2013 (TechCrunch)… Short-term Profit Taking vs. Long-term Value Creation: The Future of PayPal (LinkedIn)…

New Location-Based Services Are Poised to Enter the Mainstream

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To a surprising degree, the panels and presenters at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit last week in Denver emphasized a similar theme: we’re about to see a plethora of new technology-enhanced real-life experiences centering on ingenious uses of data. The signal feature this time around is an orientation toward experiences situated in a physical context. The question the new technologies will answer is this: “What do I need my technology to do for me now, in this place, at this time, under these circumstances?”

Can Renewed Coordination Prevent a Rollup in Local Media?

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Last week Google made news when the search giant struck a deal with the Local Media Consortium to power a private advertising exchange . Yesterday, Christian Hendricks, the Consortium’s chairman and a McClatchy executive, pitched the plan to a room of media executives, and made the case why the new consortium could succeed where it failed nearly a decade ago…

Street Fight Daily: RadioShack Shutters Stores, A Rollup in Food Delivery

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyRadioShack Plans to Close Up to 1,100 Stores (Wall Street Journal)… With Eye On Growth, Just Eat Buys Meal2Go To Offer EPOS Tech To Its Takeaway Partners (TechCrunch)… NCR Updates Its iPad Cash Register With Loyalty Features (GigaOm)…