Commentary
Apple Maps: Taking the Long View
There’s no dancing around the fact that the much-anticipated launch of Apple Maps has turned into a fiasco for the company. Yet there’s little doubt Apple will buff out this particular blemish with time. The interesting part will be seeing exactly how the company chooses to address the gap in expertise that led to the current sub-par product. A big acquisition of talent or technology seems likely…
iOS6: Can Google Beat Apple in its Own Backyard?
Mapping is a game ultimately won on function rather than form. This requires lots of listings data and search algorithms; in other words, things that are non-core to Apple. Relative to Google’s tenure in this area, Apple is only starting to stitch together local vertical content partners like Yelp and TomTom. And it’s already starting to show…
BxB Recap: Is This the Future of Local News?
The passion with the group at Block by Block isn’t just about great journalism — it’s about turning online journalism into a business; it’s about leveraging existing tools and creating new ones; and most importantly it’s about working to collaboratively across these businesses to make an impact…
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How One Community News Project Grew From One Blog to 30 Sites
When Kerry Anne Ducey started blogging in her suburban community of Ridgefield, CT. in 2009, what happened within the several square miles of this 300-year-old community of about 25,000 people was the center of her journalistic universe. Today her HamletHub is a partnership of 30 community websites in the Connecticut-New York suburbs, which she says will soon grow to 45 sites…
7 Ways to Use Weather Data for Hyperlocal Marketing
Hyperlocal vendors are making it possible for business owners like Stromberg to overlay weather data on top of daily sales figures to make better decisions, but many local merchants are still unsure of how to utilize the insights they glean from this information. Here are seven strategies for local businesses to use weather information to better target their hyperlocal messaging…
Street Fight Daily: Square Buys Scheduling Startup, Uber’s Latest Snafu
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.…Square Acquires BookFresh To Add Booking Services For Merchants (TechCrunch)… Uber Kept New Drivers Off the Road to Encourage Surge Pricing and Increase Fares (Verge)… The Payments Challenge for Mobile Carriers (New York Times)…
Street Fight Daily: Apple Rolls Out iBeacon Program, Square Picks Up In-Store
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Apple Starts iBeacon Product Certification Under ‘Made for iPhone’ Program (Apple Insider)… Square is Testing a New App for Ordering Food: Square Pickup (Priceonomics)… Ford to Drop Microsoft From Car Systems (New York Times)…
Why Data May Kill Content as the Key to Local Relevancy
During a keynote at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit in Denver Tuesday, Carol Davidsen, chief executive at Cir.cl and a former Obama for America staffer, spoke about the way the campaign used data to avoid pricey local news buys, and how those learnings are shaping the way companies in the private market buy media…
Inventory Data Could Help Turn The Tide for Brick-and-Mortar Retailers
The rapid growth of Amazon, and the high-profile decline of brick-and-mortar retailers like Borders, masks a surprising statistic: e-commerce makes up only 5-10% of total retail sales in the country. During a panel at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit in Denver Tuesday, panelist argued that bringing inventory data online could provide small, brick-and-mortar stores with an advantage over their online-only competitors…
Charting Consumer Behavior In the Real World
At Street Fight’s Local Data Summit on Tuesday, LocalSEOGuide proprietor Andrew Shotland started off a morning panel discussion on charting consumer behavior in the real world by asking panelists how close the local data industry is to being able to collect and aggregate the location of consumers, and then sell that information directly to marketers…
#LDS14 As New Sensors Emerge, Risks and Rewards in Location Data
The bulk of location data may come from smartphone’s today, but a new wave of sensors could open up a range of new possibilities for developers and businesses to interact with consumers a given place. During a panel at Street Fight’s Local Data Sumit in Denver Tuesday, speakers from Intel, Qualcomm, and KS Technologies discussed the way chip-level innovations are driving the local tech space, and how new sensors could open up a flood of consumer location data.
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