News and Analysis
Out of Its Rocky Recent Past, Philly.com Seeks to Be ‘Indispensable’
Philadelphia Media Network is building its future around a reorganized and united news operation that aims to produce more engaging editorial content with fewer editors and reporters and sell the package to readers of Philly.com for $2.99 a week after 10 free views. We recently caught up with PMN Editor and VP Gabriel Escobar to discuss this strategy.
Street Fight Daily: Mobile/Social/Video Dominate Ad Spending, Facebook’s Missing Video Metrics
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Trifecta of Mobile, Social, and Video Thrives While Print Declines… How Do We Measure Facebook’s Video Biz? It Still Hasn’t Told Us… For Third Oldest American Retailer, More Data and Business Hasn’t Meant More Advertising…
What Alignable’s New Trust Ratings Mean for Loyalty Vendors
Based on the results in Alignable’s 2018 Q1 Small Business Trust Index, the three least trusted categories of vendors include legal, hiring and people management, and loyalty and rewards. Alignable’s findings were based on Net Promoter Score ranges and averages for each products and services category.
Commentary
Hello Privacy, Meet the New ‘Presence’ – Location
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Many years ago, when you were probably a tween, i was at AOL (sorry, Aol.) and a degree away from the following nugget. I think the folks involved included Ted , Barry Appelman and maybe Eric Bosco. I could have that a bit wrong but roll with me – I’m not the official techstorian and they’ll tell me if I’m wrong…
Civic Networking: The Next Next Thing?
This is the first in a series of guest posts by thought leaders in the local arena. We asked where local-social media might go in 2011.
By Tom Grubisich
Some Cassandras are forecasting the end of social networking. I will keep my ear next to my computer for the sound of some 600 million people migrating to the next big thing, but don’t think Facebook faces doomsday any time soon. Or Foursquare, Yelp or Gowalla, to name just a few of the proliferating social networks that have claimed a piece of Web space. But I do think social networking is on the threshold of an important evolution that will both affirm its basic value but also take it into new and ever more beneficial directions. Shaping this transformation are economic, technological and societal forces that are propelling people toward a path with many entry points but one destination: to act together and to do so smarter and locally…
Ultra Local, Simplicity, Ego Lead the Way in 2011
I thought I’d wait for the smoke to clear on all the 2011 tech prognostications before filing a few of my own. These are actually a bit less predictions than bankable trends. Their focus is on mobile but also the things around the edges that will make mobile-local interesting, scary, useful, intrusive and wonderful in the coming 363 days.
Simple Gets Simpler: Successful online and mobile experiences will become much closer to being intuitive than ever before, anticipating not the geek’s natural next clicks but the average Jane’s. I’m not talking about Web 2.X, with its big buttons, oversize input boxes and Ajax popovers but rather one action to the next dictated by the glassy smoothness of an inhale following and exhale. This is true behavioral anticipation leaving no room for confusion and no time for pause. Simple = successful…
Latest Posts
5 Tools for Building a Community Marketplace
With their built-in audiences already in place, hyperlocal publications are able to easily overcome one of the biggest obstacles to getting a community marketplace off the ground. However, technical challenges still remain, and building a marketplace from scratch can be extraordinarily time consuming and expensive. Now, a handful of vendors are offering a solution, providing publishers with the tools they need to create custom marketplaces that can be up and running in a matter of days…
Street Fight Daily: PayPal Nears Deal For Braintree, Intuit Overhauls SMB Product
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… PayPal Nears Deal for Braintree Payments (Wall Street Journal)… Intuit Overhauls QuickBooks Online as Competition for Small Businesses Ramps Up (AllThingsD)… < strong>eBay Unveils Click & Collect Service So Small Merchants Can Offer In-Store Collections (TheNextWeb)…
Is Content King in Local Too?
In the pantheon of buzzwords overtaking pitch decks and CMO-speak, “content marketing” is the new darling. The term has legitimate grounding to be fair, but like “long tail” and “web 2.0” in days past, its overuse precedes it. Content marketing also isn’t anything new — it’s been done for years, albeit under the ethically challenged “advertorial” rubric among other flavors. Now it’s new, improved, and hitched to en vogue terms like “native.”
In Nod To SaaS Future, ReachLocal Rolls Out Lead Management Product
The company is extending its subscription ReachEdge product to a general audience, providing tools for merchants to not only generate, but also manage leads that come directly to a business’s website or through a display or search campaign. Kris Barton, the company’s director of product, says the problem that software needs to solve for small businesses today is that of converting demand into customers…
Street Fight Daily: Regulators Crackdown on Fake Reviews, Facebook ‘Closes The Loop’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Give Yourself 5 Stars? Online, It Might Cost You (New York Times)… Facebook Connects Impressions To Offline Sales For Telcos (MarketinLand)… Mobile Payments Are One-Third of Braintree’s Business (PandoDaily)…
What Scale Means After Patch and Groupon
Macroeconomic developments and internal politics aside, both Tim Armstrong and Andrew Mason succumbed to the flawed assumption, held by many at the time, that local was a land grab. They mistook opportunity with urgency, falsely believing that the local market was some homogenous block, which would open its coffers to the first company that invested enough money, or put enough feet on the street, to make it work…
5 Tools Retailers Can Use to Create Indoor Maps
Mobile navigation apps can easily direct consumers to a business’ front door, but once shoppers step foot inside — where the real action takes place — they’re usually on their own. Now, a handful of indoor mapping vendors are using hyperlocal technology to help retailers, malls and other large venues take the next step in guiding customers through the purchase funnel, with tools for developing interior maps that can be used to direct shoppers toward specific aisles or locations within an establishment…
LBMA Podcast: Placecast’s New Mobile Ad Platform, Bing Partners With Local Corp
On the show: Audi brings public desire and reward to the Mini in London, Estimote powered by iBeacon is just the start of the mote world, Coca-Cola’s Positivity Wall, and PayPal takes their hands-free payments to the masses. Plus Chuck Martin’s Mobile Minute gives us the Cool vs. Creepy scale for location based marketing…
Street Fight Daily: Google Wallet Comes To iOS, Groupon’s Monster Rally
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Google Wallet Finally Comes to the iPhone (With a Big Asterisk) (AllThingsD)… Three Reasons Groupon’s Monster Rally Will Continue (Wall Street Journal)… Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman Ignored Advice From Elon Musk and Peter Thiel And Succeeded Anyway (CNNMoney)…
Community News Revenues: How the Networks Compare to the ‘Indies’
I was surprised — shocked, actually — to discover that the regional community news network Daily Voice has average ad sales of only $38,000 annually on a current basis at each of its 41 sites in suburban Connecticut and New York. Is this the new normal for ad revenue at community news sites? I went to four other community news publishers-owners, all independents, to get their reaction…
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