News and Analysis
Street Culture: Sitter.me CEO on Owning Mistakes and Terrible-but-Fun Team Building
“How we view mistakes is you admit it, you learn very quickly, and then turn it around,” says Sitter.me CEO and co-founder Kristen Stiles. After quoting a client a wrong price, Stiles owned up to the error, and the company develop a new procedure to ensure similar stakes would not be made again.
Street Fight Daily: Google & Apple Boost Local AR, Foursquare’s New Location-Based Creative
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Report: Smartphones, Developer Kits Drive Local AR and Visual Search… Foursquare’s New In-House Agency Will Pump Out Location-Based Creative… Marketers Still Shy Away from Venturing Too Deep into Ad Tech…
Sprinklr Launches AI Solution to Help Brands Manage Customer Experiences at Scale
Dubbed Sprinklr Intuition, Sprinklr’s AI tool can process an average of 700 million messages per day across social channels, and it becomes smarter with each customer interaction.
Commentary
The Outsourcing of Hyperlocal Journalism Is Inevitable
My conviction in the power of collaborative “glocal” journalism has not been swayed by the Journatic debacle. Properly managed, outsourcing some newsroom functions can be incredibly cost-effective and can contribute to the quality of a publication’s editorial content. Badly executed, outsourcing can become a plague that infects a publication’s journalistic integrity.
Facebook and the Latent Local Layer
If Facebook were to really turn its attention to local, it could do some amazing things. Imagine if all of our posts and check-ins related to local restaurants were correlated together in a meaningful way. There’s little doubt Facebook could recommend the new place down the street based on your preferences and those of others similar to you, with a high likelihood of successfully predicting what you will like…
All Geotargeting Methods Are Not Created Equal
The social-mobile-local movement will most certainly drive even stronger interest in and use of geotargeting. But with all the options available, what factors dictate when marketers should use one method over another? It depends on what message they want to convey to whom and when, along with how much contact and engagement they want with the consumer…
Latest Posts
Bitcoin Finding Growth, Stability at the Local Level
The infamous virtual currency is slowly gaining steam in the real world. Acceptance of Bitcoin at brick-and-mortar businesses has climbed steadily since the first exchange was established in early 2009, driven largely by merchants looking for a cheaper alternative to credit and debit card transactions…
5 Marketplaces for Buying, Selling and Sharing With Neighbors
Startups are looking for new ways to reinvigorate the function of traditional newspaper classified listings. Positioned as an alternative to Craigslist, hyperlocal marketplaces that facilitate the buying, selling, and sharing of goods between neighbors are filling an untapped niche and bringing together people in local communities…
LBMA Podcast: Smartphone-Linked Signs, Transportation-Aware Ads
On the show: AT&T partners with Sabre; AdTile’s new reward-based motion ads; our Mobile Minute with Chuck Martin ponders the need of store hours in the age of mobile; and our special guest is newly-acquired Donna founder Kevin Cheng…
Street Fight Daily: OpenTable Buys Ness, Chicago Cabbies Sue Uber
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… OpenTable Buys Ness, Tests Mobile Payments (TechCrunch)… Chicago Cabbies Sue Over Unregulated Uber, Lyft Services (Bloomberg)… For Yelp, an Expanding Push Into Politics (Hill)…
AOL’s Armstrong: ‘We’re Not Giving Up on Patch’
Aol’s tenure as Patch’s sole owner may be over, but Tim Armstrong, the company’s chief executive, is not giving up on the hyperlocal network just yet. During an interview on CNBC Thursday morning, Armstrong said that the company has retained a significant stake in Patch and called reports that the company “jettisoned” the struggling property to Hale Global incorrect…
One Model for Successful Hyperlocal News: Break the Rules
StuNewsLaguna has become a success in its sunset-renowned coastal community in Orange County, Calif., by ignoring and even violating some of the “best practices” of hyperlocal journalism, and paying no heed to the people-don’t-care-about-local-news critics. Shaena Stabler, the 28-year-old co-owner with founder and veteran Orange County journalist Stu Saffer, explains how she and Saffer are making StuNews succeed…
Street Fight Daily: Andreessen Bearish on Local News, Google Bets on Location-based Gaming
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Marc Andreessen: The ‘Problem with Local News is Most People Don’t Care’ (Poynter)… Google: Location-based Gaming as Popular as Virtual Reality in 10 Years (Polygon)… Will Facebook Build a Stand-Alone Local Search App? (Screenwerk)…
In Yelp Earnings, No Sign of the ‘Mobile Gap’
Yelp posted stronger than expected earnings on Thursday, sending shares up nearly 10% in after hours trading — a fitting coda to a banner year for the firm on Wall Street. Shares of Yelp more than tripled in 2013, driven in part by rapid international expansion, a burgeoning local ad market in the U.S., and well-received strategic initiatives…
As Offline Purchase Data Comes Online, Changes in Store for Local Marketing
If exchange is the purpose of a marketplace, transaction data — information about who bought what from whom, and for how much — is its pulse. With 90% of transactions occurring offline, the growth of connected payments, and the subsequent ability for businesses and consumers to understand who’s buying what in the real-world, has deep implications not only for the local marketplace, but for the wider digital economy as well….
Street Fight Daily: Microsoft Invests in Foursquare, Target Turns to Chip and Pin
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Foursquare Teams With Microsoft for Dollars and Data (Wall Street Journal)… Target Vows to Speed Anti-Fraud Technology (New York Times)… Satya Nadella: Our SMB ‘Ringer’ at Microsoft (Local Onliner)…
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Street Fight Categories
AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature