News and Analysis

SMB Index: Local Stocks Take a Hit in February

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In a turbulent February, which saw stocks give back gains from January over 2 days (Feb 7–9), the SCP SMB Index retreated 2% during the month.

SMB OS Operators, Part I: Upserve

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The first in our series of interviews on SMB OS is Upserve founder and CEO Angus Davis. Formerly Swipely, UpServe had been living out the principles of SMB OS long before we started calling it that.

Street Fight Daily: Amazon Rolls Out Free Whole Foods Deliveries, Google Sells Zagat

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Rolls Out Free Whole Foods Deliveries for Prime Members in San Francisco & Atlanta… Google Is Selling Off Zagat… SMB OS Operators, Part I: Upserve…

Commentary

Why Isn’t Mobile Display Advertising Huge Yet?

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Instead of trying to force web paradigms onto mobile, advertisers should be rushing to localize their message and take advantage of the 1-2 punch of smartphones’ portability and location…

Local Stores Become Showrooms for Online Buying (Part II)

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Following up on a recent column about mobile local shopping data (and the dreaded “showrooming” effect), I had the chance to catch up with eBay’s head of local, and Milo founder, Jack Abraham to talk a bit about where the space is headed…

The 5 Most Important Things SMBs Can Do Online

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Taking your local business online doesn’t necessarily mean you’re trying to tap into a massive network of potential new customers. Perhaps that is the endgame for some ambitious entrepreneurs, but for many businesses — especially local and service-based business — the aim is to build and maintain meaningful online and offline relationships at a local level…

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Square CEO’s Gift, Groupon Expands Point-of-Sale

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.Square’s Dorsey Returns 10% of his Shares (Fortune)… For Groupon, The iPad is its New Passport to Global Markets (Washington Business Journal)… UrbanSpoon Hires New Top Exec, Hopes to Emerge from Restaurant Discovery Pack (PandoDaily)…

DemandForce CMO: There’s No Limit to Where We Will Want to Go

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If Google’s acquisition of Waze was the biggest exit in local tech over the past few years, Intuit’s buy of Demandforce was arguably the most important. Since shelling out nearly half of a billion dollars for the retention marketing software provider, the company has quietly executed on a strategy to position itself an integrated solutions provider for small businesses…

Openings and New Hires at Patch, Callfire, Kenshoo and Radiate Media

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Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, new hires and jobs at BIA/Kelsey, AOL, User Friendly Media, and more…

LBMA Podcast: LIVE From MoDevEast!

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On the show: UC Berkeley tests image-based indoor location; Qualcomm’s Gimbal sensors hit the street; Mojiva partners with Retailigence; and Pitney Bowes partners with Twitter. Special guest is Barg Upender, founder of Mobomo…

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Raises Another $35M, eBay’s Strategy for Offline Commerce

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.…. Foursquare Raises a $35 Million Round and Adds DFJ’s Schuler to the Board (AllThingsD)… EBay’s Strategy for Taking On Amazon (New York Times)… Nextdoor Talks Growth, Now Being Used In One In Six Neighborhoods In The US (TechCrunch)…

Why Small Local Sites *Must* Have Multiple Revenue Streams

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“If there is a ‘model’ for community news, it’s finding the right mix of diverse revenue streams that are best suited to the particular conditions of a news organization’s local market and journalistic mission,” says Jake Batsell of NewsBiz. “But that diversity of revenue is critical, because news outlets depending on a single stream of income are leaving themselves vulnerable…”

Case Study: Caribou Coffee Amps Up Holiday Sales With Mobile Gift Cards

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In an effort to enhance Caribou Coffee’s mobile marketing capabilities, and spur a boost in gift card sales during the important holiday shopping season, vice president of marketing Michele Vig launched an eGift card initiative in early November. Now, customers who purchase eGift cards online can send their gifts to friends via email. Recipients can then redeem their gifts by showing their smartphones to a cashier or printing the gift card at home and handing over a paper printout…

Street Fight Daily: Moovit Raises $28M, Local’s Next IPO

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.Moovit Raises A $28M Sequoia-led Funding Round For Its Public Transit Service (PandoDaily)… Local Heroes: The Public Companies of Tomorrow (AllThingsD)… Hey Uber, Lyft Is Growing Faster Than You (TechCrunch)…

Could Patch Find New Life as a SaaS Platform for Local Publishers?

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At this point, the best path forward for Armstrong to realize his noble goal of delivering high-quality community news might just be to simply throw open the gates and recast Patch as a publishing platform for small and medium-sized publishers…

Geo-Unicorns: Will Local Spawn More Billion-Dollar Startups?

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At the Street Fight Summit in New York a couple of months ago, I moderated a panel that looked at the “Billion-Dollar Opportunities in Hyperlocal.” Our thesis in putting the panel together was that the personalization made possible by location-based technologies was still in its early stages of evolution, and that the “geo-web” will be spawning many of the billion-dollar exits that later-stage VCs crave…