News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: GDPR Is Here and Complaints Are Being Filed, How Not to Handle Reviews

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Tech Giants Face First GDPR Complaints Over ‘Forced Consent’… Google Confirms Feed Ads Are a Test… Namogoo Releases 2018 Online Consumer Behavior Study…

Local News Pioneer Mike Orren on Industry’s Future: A Steep but Climbable Hill

“There are no silver bullets,” Mike Orren tells Tom Grubisich. Local news “has always been a complex industry, and advertising, marketing services, managing the print demand—all are going to continue to be a part of the equation.”

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Adds Services to Marketplace, Sketchy Google Knowledge Panel Practices

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Marketplace Launches New Services Feature in Partnership with On-Demand Startups… A Fifth of Amazon Merchants Sell More Than $1 Million a Year, Double Last Year’s Share… How the Washington Post Is Building Its Tech Platform, Arc…

Commentary

Daily Deals: Still Lucrative for Local Publishers

Given the challenges facing pure-play daily deal companies (and the saturation of news stories chronicling their issues), a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the deals space is experiencing a major downturn. Recent studies, however, suggest a more bullish outlook for deals in 2013…

Using Geotargeting to Follow the Consumer from Desktop to Aisle

The choice of a location-based solution should depend on what message marketers want to convey to whom and when, along with how much consumer contact and engagement they want. As consumers continue to demand the ability to shop on their own terms and the local shopping experience becomes even more entrenched in the buying psyche, retailers will need a three-pronged digital strategy with a strong geotargeting component to be competitive…

The Localization of the Enterprise

Organizations are decentralizing and adapting to consumer hardware cycles by storing data in the cloud and utilizing software services without deployments. Tech capability dictated by employees is a seismic shift that will forever change the world of technology. We’re going to see a similar shift in marketing: the localization of the enterprise…

Latest Posts

Putting Small Businesses on the (New) Google Map

Google Maps is a key resource that businesses can use to get more local searchers to discover them online. But can it also help them get more leads? The simple answer is yes, but it’s a not as easy as simply claiming a listing. It’s only by taking advantage of all that Google Maps has to offer — and then tracking how traffic from your maps listing converts into leads and customers — that you can see just how powerful accurate, optimized maps listings can be…

Niche Site CHARLIE Goes Big With Underwriter Le Creuset

After an initial stint doing publicity in the movie industry in Los Angeles, Caroline Nuttall migrated to Charleston, S.C., and fell “head over heels” for its “beauty and progressive culture.” She expressed her passion for the city by creating the local digital magazine CHARLIE, whose words, images and design capture the many faceted, old-new richness of her publication’s namesake. Here Nuttall tells Street Fight how she navigated CHARLIE to new revenue streams, including an underwriting partnership with national cookware maker Le Creuset.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)…