Commentary
Police Scanners and Speculation = Necessary Hyperlocal Journalism?
A lively discussion erupted yesterday in the comments section of Street Fight’s interview with B-Town Blog’s Scott Schaefer. At issue: Schaefer’s suggestion that sites did their communities disservice by reporting on rumors and information that comes over the transom via unconfirmed rumors and police scanner reports… Among those taking issue were The Batavian’s Howard Owens, who wrote: “When you don’t do scanner reports, you’re missing a key to audience growth and retention, and I think abandoning your ethical obligation as a real-time news service to keep readers fully informed.”…
Foursquare, Groupon, and the Market-Making Problem
With Groupon’s filing to go public last week, there has been even more debate over the two-sided market strategy of consumers and local merchants. Another business that has focused on this approach is Foursquare. Is the window of opportunity closing for Foursquare to become the breakout success it could be? The answer depends on how much the company is willing to change its DNA to serve both sides of their market — and perhaps take a few lessons on self-serve and average selling price from Groupon…
Partnership With Foursquare Is a Natural Step for Groupon
Earlier this week All Things Digital reported that Groupon and Foursquare were discussing a partnership to push local deals targeted to location-aware check-ins. The media world has been buzzing about the rumor, but neither company has broken an official silence to confirm (or deny) the partnership or discussions. Perhaps it’s just a foregone conclusion, though, that Groupon would add immediacy and social distribution to its model. In fact it already has…
Latest Posts
How to Set a Pricing Structure for Your Hyperlocal Business
Most hyperlocal founders think the products they’ve developed are priceless. The small business owners they’re selling to, however, are likely to have a very different view. Deciding on a pricing structure is one of the most difficult challenges a hyperlocal business is likely to face in its earliest days. Here are six strategies for determining the right pricing structure as an early-stage startup from hyperlocal executives who’ve managed to crack the code…
Chart: The Local Marketing Landscape
The shift from print to digital is old news, but what’s shaking up the industry is the introduction of cloud-based business management systems — for everything from payments and point-of-sale to schedule — into the marketing mix. Marketers can write algorithms to connect supply and demand, automating the way businesses and consumers interact locally. Yelp meets Booker. Facebook meets OpenTable. These combinations will bring together consumer data from every stage of the purchase funnel, automate marketing plans and messaging, and reduce implementation and sales costs for both marketers and solutions providers…
How Audiences Must be Redefined for the Mobile Platform
Now, marketers are rushing to grapple with a new medium in the smartphone, struggling to understand what audience means in the mobile age. In considering audience on mobile, marketers need to understand the constantly changing context of a user and the implications it has on the needs and attitudes of the consumer. Marketers need to listen to all the signals a smartphone provides, the most important of which is undoubtedly location…
5 Leading Indicators of the Future of Local Search
The local search market is changing. On the buy-side, enterprise advertisers are starting to assert their control, demonstrating that they can leverage large footprints to compete in local with clean distributed data, and accurate claimed citations. Consumers, meanwhile, increasingly want to use their mobile devices for more activities than navigational search, expecting to be able to buy and not only find goods and services nearby. The advancements of local search are evolving so rapidly that a race to control consumer behavior may be brewing between the Davids and Goliaths…
LBMA Podcast: Retailigence Does Offline Pickup, Fooda Does Hyperlocal Food
In this week’s episode, Jack in the Box uses time as a marketing factor with Pandora; Netclearance lets you do indoor location with WiFi and BLE; Disney harvests energy from your finger. Run to the beat of the right song with our app of the week, TempoRun. And special guest Dave Roesch of the Atlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority teaches us how cities should be using location based marketing…
On The Heels Of New Funding, Swirl Rolls Out In-Store Mobile Marketing Platform
Boston-based Swirl Networks has announced has released a new in-door marketing tool, which provides tools for retailers to create and deliver personalized content to their customers based on the customer’s in-store location. The company launched a pilot program of the platform in May for retailers including Kenneth Cole and Timberland, and has now released the service to the general public…
How a Hyperlocal Editor-Publisher Team Scored Big in Suburban Nashville
One of the highest revenue producers on Michele’s List of independent hyperlocal sites is BrentWood Communications, which publishes four-year-old Brentwood Home Page in suburban Nashville, Tenn. Founders Kelly Gilfillan and Susan Leathers launched a second suburban site, Franklin Home Page, a year ago and a third, Nolensville Home Page, this summer. Total revenue for the sites is $251,000-$500,000 annually, a range attained by few hyperlocals, whether independents or part of corporate networks. Here’s how Gilfillan and Leathers did it…
MapBox Raises $10 Million in Series A Round
MapBox, a cloud-based map platform that allows users to design customized and interactive maps, closed a $10 million Series A round led by Foundry Group today. The Washington, DC. and San Francisco based company, which develops its service entirely on top of the open-source mapping platform OpenStreetMap, has plans to use the funding to grow its 35 member team….
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