News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Launches UPS & FedEx Rival, P&G Cracks the Code on Marketing
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon to Launch Delivery Service for Businesses, Challenging UPS and FedEx… Drawbridge Partners with mParticle to Help Brands Deliver Personalized Experiences… Liftoff Dating App Report Shows Cold Seasons’ User Behavior and Geographic Trends…
Commentary
What Motivates Yelp’s Power Users?
In an effort to dig a little deeper into what motivates Elite Squad-ers and other active Yelp users — beyond the free beer and crudités — Street Fight spoke with three power users who approach the service with differing goals in mind, but all of whom view Yelp as an integral part of their decision-making process.
Why Facebook Killed ‘Deals’
Mark Zuckerberg has said that Facebook operates on the premise that “everything is more fun when it’s social.” In his mind, things like music, photos, events and even simple thoughts, were inherently more enjoyable when shared with others. It’s precisely for this reason that I believe the company killed its Deals service…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Square’s Ecommerce Push, Waze Data In Google Maps
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Square’s Quiet E-Commerce Threat (BusinessWeek)… Waze Data Is Starting To Show Up In Google Maps (BuzzFeed)… Selling By Groupon Insiders, Like Big News, Is On Way (USAToday)…
Is Groupon’s Deal Marketplace Undermining Merchants?
It has been my understanding that the purpose of daily deals is purely customer acquisition — to bring in new customers, not to target your existing ones. With the new marketplace focus, however, it seems as though this is no longer the case. I recently did a search for some of Groupon’s top NYC marketplace offers and I found that the company seems to be cannibalizing the local businesses’ existing customers by using Google AdWords to bid on nearly every Marketplace deal’s local business name…
Why Fixing Local Marketing Means Making Tech Disappear
Today, the local web — the network of technologies that help business and consumer interact locally — is far too opaque. Amid the rush to innovate and revolutionize the way we buy or sell goods locally, the industry has amassed a muddled soup of software that’s marked more by it’s complexity than its capability. If the last decade was about building the technologies that bring our local experiences online, the next ten years will focus on making those technologies go away…
LBMA Podcast: NeoPost Acquires DMTI, ByteLight’s Series A
On the show: Superpedestrian works to commercialize the Copenhagen Wheel; Square is up against the patent wall; privacy’s voice gets stronger with the Future of Privacy Forum and Chuck Schumer; iZettle let’s you pay the homeless with your credit card; and location-based CPR assistance arrives…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon’s Big Redesign, Local Ad Tech Moves Outdoors
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Groupon Builds New Website, Eyeing Marketplace Growth (USAToday)… Vistar And Verve Link DOOH, Mobile Screens, Create Location-Based Programmatic Platform (MediaPost)… Square Market Is Attracting Sellers That Have Never Taken A Reader Payment (GigaOm)…
Hyperlocals and Scale: How a ‘No-No’ Can Be Turned Into a Win-Win
“Local doesn’t scale” is the mantra of many independent community news sites. Based on the recent wrenching experiences of some major corporate hyperlocal networks, that may be the case on some level. But what about the view from other end of the telescope — of advertisers everywhere seeking to target consumers down to the neighborhood level?
How Hyperlocal Publishers Can Strengthen Relationships With Advertisers
One of the key takeaways from the Street Fight Summit in New York was that the future of local lies in partnerships. Forging relationships with local businesses is absolutely necessary for any hyperlocal publisher hoping for long-term success. The question that remains is how, exactly, publishers should go about strengthening the relationships they’ve built with small business advertisers and other organizations in their communities…
Do Small Businesses Really Need a Website?
The website is the richest online repository of compelling information about a business, but it probably isn’t its primary means of attracting customers. Rather, customers who find you via Google Maps or Facebook may need to refer to your website in the event a third party search doesn’t provide enough information to make a buying decision. The website serves as a last stage effort to win business that hasn’t already been secured via local search…
Streets Ahead: GBP Data Glitch, Google Supercharges Search, Instagram Tests Insights