News and Analysis

5 Ways to Make Your Startup Culture Stand Out

After three years reporting on “Street Culture,” Street Fight looks back on five ways that company leaders are making their company culture stand out—and some of the best pieces of advice for doing the same at your business.

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Debuts API for SMBs/Startups, Google to Survive Antitrust Challenge

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… With New Solution, Foursquare Targets SMB and Startup Markets… Google Poised to Emerge Unscathed from European Antitrust Crackdown… 5 Ways to Make Your Startup Culture Stand Out…

With New Solution, Foursquare Targets SMB and Startup Markets

Riding high off the success of its Places database and Pilgrim SDK, the location intelligence company Foursquare is opening up its location data to the small and mid-size business market.

Commentary

Prescription for Patch: Become an All-in-One SMB Marketing Solution

There is a real opportunity to offer businesses a service that bundles together as many online promotional vehicles as possible into a simple, low-cost package that makes it easy for them to communicate with their customers. If Patch decided to go this route, the company would be well-positioned to make the service work. Unlike other local start-ups, it has the resources to build this kind of integrated system…

Selling a City to Tourists Via Hyperlocal

There is an emerging opportunity for cities to subsidize hyperlocal marketing efforts through hyperlocal platforms. For example, a city agency could create a neighborhood-based promotion on top of mobile payment play LevelUp in which a visitor who shared that they say, ate lunch at a traditional tourist destination, could win a promotion to receive a free round trip train fare to a peripheral neighborhood if they ate dinner at a restaurant in the neighborhood…

Local Search: Will Mobile Overtake Desktop?

Location targeting and search ads (and their combination) will be the relevance drivers that create not only intent-driven user engagement and advertiser demand, but also a top source of premium ad units. It hasn’t happened yet but it will…

Latest Posts

How Community News Sites Can Get the Most Out of Facebook

To get specific about how publishers can maximize their presence on the biggest social media platform, I went to Jake Batsell, who is writing a forthcoming book on audience engagement. Here’s what he told me, based on more than a hundred interviews and visits to many old and new media community news operations…

Openings and New Hires at Whitepages, Advance Digital, LocalBlox & Topix

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 AT&T, VendAsta, LinkedIn, AOL, and more…

LBMA Podcast: 10,000 Predictions for 2014

In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan take a look back at their 2013 predictions and forecast what is to come in 2014 including the companies we feel will flare and falter…

Street Fight Daily: Groupon’s Big Acquisition Closes, Shopify Revamps iOS App

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.Groupon Finalizes $260 Million Deal for Ticket Monster, LivingSocial’s Korean Business (Recode)… Uber Driver Hits, Kills Six-year-old Girl. Is “Not our Problem” Still an Appropriate Response? (Pando)… Shopify Revamps Its iOS App With A Focus On Payments And Store Management (TechCrunch)…

Google’s Local Social Conundrum

Google’s attempt at ushering in the Facebook-ization of search, local and otherwise, depends on a major shift in perception and engagement. It may be difficult to bring about such a shift with a “build it and they will come” approach — given the current volume of content, the emphasis on social turns Google’s rich local result set into a desert.

5 Ways to Help SMBs Measure the Value of a Hyperlocal Campaign

Nearly half of merchants surveyed in Street Fight’s “2013 Report on the State of the Local Merchant” said uncertainty about results was the single largest obstacle preventing them from investing more in hyperlocal channels. When vendors make it easier for merchants to evaluate the performance of their products, they increase the chances that satisfied clients will stick around for a longer period of time. Here are five strategies vendors can use to help clients quantify the value of hyperlocal…

Street Fight Daily: Yelp Hits The Hill, Google Kills Another Local App

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.Yelp Lobbying on Patent, Copyright Reform (The Hill)… Google to Discontinue Schemer, the Goal-Sharing Service That Time Forgot (VentureBeat)… AP New Year’s Eve Photos Appear on Digital Billboards (Poynter)…

Hyperlocal Execs’ 2014 Predictions (Part Two): Locu, Radius, Placed

As we have for the past couple of years, Street Fight recently asked a number of hyperlocal luminaries to weigh in with their predictions for where local is headed in 2014. We ran the first installment of their responses yesterday — here are a bunch more…

Street Fight’s 10 Most Popular Stories From 2013

On this last day of 2013, here’s a look back at some of the Street Fight stories that really piqued your interest this year (at least as far as page views go). We’re grateful for all of your support this past year, and we look forward to bringing you more great content, research, and events about sustainable hyperlocal business models in 2014…

Street Fight Hosted Three Events in 2013 — Here’s What to Remember

Street Fight hosted three events in 2013, two in New York during the winter (thanks to Hurricane Sandy) and fall, and another in San Francisco in late spring. The programming for the events, and the stories flowing out of them, reflect the continued transformation of the local marketing industry and the emergence of a new, technology-driven local ecosystem. With the year coming to a close, here is a look back at the biggest stories that came out of Street Fight’s Annual Summits…