News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: Brands Bet on Dynamic Ads, Inside Uber’s Espionage Operation

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Brands Bet on Smarter Ads… The Tricks and Travails of Uber’s Spies… After Folding in Print, Self Finds Audience of Over 8 Million on Snapchat…

How Major Brands Are ‘Gamifying’ the Consumer Buying Experience

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Although gamification itself is not a new marketing strategy, advancements in mobile apps and location technologies are providing brands with new opportunities to engage customers using these time-tested techniques. Here’s how six major brands are using gamification to change the consumer experience and promote loyalty.

Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Acquires Main Street Hub, New York Times Leads Way on Loyalty

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… GoDaddy Is Acquiring Main Street Hub, Social Marketing Platform for SMBs… How the New York Times Uses Interactive Tools to Build Loyalty and Subscriptions… Here’s Why the Epidemic of Malicious Ads Grew So Much Worse Last Year…

Latest Posts

LBMA Podcast: Ubimo and Belly Funded, Foursquare’s Pro-active Recs

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On the show: Foursquare’s proactive recommendations; McDonalds’ NFC Happy Table; JDS Uniphase launches Location Insight Services; 7Eleven invests in Belly with Andreessen Horowitz. Plus our featured app is CO Everywhere, our mobile minute with Chuck Martin looks at the biggest threat to your mobile strategy, and our special guest is journalist and author Nora Young…

Street Fight Daily: PayPal Redesigns App, Braintree’s on the Block

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyPayPal Refreshes Mobile App to Woo Shoppers and Fight Off Rivals (New York Times)… Braintree Is On The Block, Had Acquisition Talks With Square (TechCrunch)… Last-Minute Deal App HotelTonight Raises $45 Million (Wall Street Journal)…

GoDaddy Cleans Up Marketing and Simplifies Product to Woo VSBs

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The internet services company announced a major rebrand this morning, chucking the racy ads and convoluted site for a cleaner product and entrepreneur-focused pitch aimed at repositioning GoDaddy as a small business marketing firm. The rebranding includes a new marketing campaign as well as a redesign of both the company’s site and its flagship website-building product…

Is ‘The Road’ a Community News Model That Can Go the Distance?

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What to make of the ambitious “The Road” project that C-Ville Weekly in Charlottesville, Va., presented last week on its website? Is this multimedia extravaganza a promising way for community sites to go in their Holy Grail-like quest for a news model that will engage users and attract advertisers — and make for a better community, to boot? Keep in mind that “The Road” consumed more than 300 hours of editorial and production time, but didn’t produce a single dollar of revenue…

How to Find Great Salespeople for Your Hyperlocal Business

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Finding the right salespeople is one of the keys to success for any hyperlocal startup with plans to sell to local merchants, but identifying and hiring professionals with the right skillsets isn’t always as easy as it sounds. In an effort to bring some clarity to the issue, we checked in with five hyperlocal executives and asked about their strategies for finding salespeople who can effectively sell to local merchants. Here is their advice…

Street Fight Daily: Samsung’s Location-Aware Smartwatch, Hearsay Social Raises $30M

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologySamsung’s Galaxy Gear Is Location Aware, Sporting Glympse’s Friend-Finding App (GigaOm)… Hearsay Social Raises $30 Million to Give Bankers an Online Presence (New York Times)… Mobile Close To 20 Percent Of Internet Traffic Globally (MarketingLand)…

Here’s What A Good Lead Looks Like in Local

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Radius uses the core technology developed at Fwix — a system for aggregating and structuring the billion of references to places across the web — to track the activity of local businesses, and then packages the information in a business intelligence product for firms looking to sell to local businesses. Street Fight recently caught up with Darian Shirazi, the company’s founder, to discuss the digital traits of a great prospect and who’s winning (and losing) in the local marketplace…

Geo-Intent: Going to Where the Puck Will Be

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So what can make a business geo-disruptive? Beyond location awareness, it is far more important to know where a person is headed and his needs and wants at the destination. Let’s call this “geo-intent.” For the geo and mobile world to move towards its promise, web designers should be focusing more on creating engaged, opt-in behavior, and gaining robust information on geointent. With better information on geo-intent, solutions can be well targeted, and privacy concerns are more likely to fade…

Street Fight Daily: Dow Jones Sells Local Media Group, ReachLocal CEO Resigns

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyDow Jones Sells Local Media Group (Poynter)… ReachLocal CEO Gordon Resigns, Chairman Steps In As Interim (MediaPost)… Making Its First Acquisitions, Eventbrite Buys Ticketing Service Eventioz And Event Data Company Lanyrd (GigaOm)…

Legacy Media’s ‘Agency’ Business: Just More Brand Extension?

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When we clear aside all the hype, legacy companies with “agency” offerings are just creating clutter in the marketplace without offering anything of substantial new value for merchants. Media companies are far too busy playing defense to consider offense, and defense always includes copying what the other guy across town is doing…