News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: Google Assistant Fuels Hyperlocal Biz, Inside the Digital Content Bubble

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Time Out Plans to Use Google Assistant to Grow to Connect Users with Local Businesses (Digiday) City guide Time Out has developed an app for Google Assistant through which people can ask up to 100 questions about what to do in their city. Time […]

Street Fight Daily: Amazon Adds Local Artisan Products to Prime Now, CPGs Go Digital

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Brings Its Handmade Local Items to Prime Now Through Holidays (TechCrunch) For the first time, handcrafted items from local artisans – including things like home décor, jewelry, art, and more – will be available on Prime Now today all the way through […]

SMB Index: Local Stocks Keep Climbing in November

Share this:

After a scorching gain in October, the SCP SMB Index continued to rally, climbing another 3.3% in November, outpacing all other major indices we track. The S&P 500, Nasdaq and Dow Jones all experienced gains during the month of 2.1% and 1.9% and 2.5%, respectively.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Google Wallet Leaking Money, Brand Networks Snags $68M

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Google Wallet Is Leaking Money (Businessweek)… ‘Uber For Local Home Services’ Provider ClubLocal Launches In The Bay Area (TechCrunch)… Running Local: Why Facebook Marketer Brand Networks Just Snagged A $68 Million Round(Forbes)…

5 Reasons to Add Gift Cards to a Digital Loyalty Program

Share this:

Promoting customer loyalty is a broad goal that local merchants are tackling in many different ways. While plenty of platforms utilize mobile redemptions and out-of-the-box rewards or coupons to curry favor with consumers, an increasing number of loyalty providers are moving outside the virtual environment with pre-loaded physical gift cards…

Hyperlocal Sustainability (Round 2): Upbeat ‘Indies’ Say They’re Winning

Share this:

Following up on my column from last week, here are more unvarnished thoughts from “indie” hyperlocal editors and publishers I’ve been talking to about sustainability (a word, by the way, that sets the teeth of some of these entrepreneurial journalists on edge)…

Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Talks ‘Localization,’ Smartphone Adoption Reaches Majority

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Checking Into Foursquare? Yahoo’s CFO Talks About Next Mobile M&A — Including Importance of “Localization.” (AllThingsD)… Pew: 61 Percent In US Now Have Smartphones (MarketingLand)… Yelp Eyes Shopping On Site (SocialTimes)…

With Disparate Data, Factual Founder Sees Opportunity

Share this:

In a fireside chat with Marketing Evolution CEO Rex Briggs at Street Fight Summit West Tuesday, Gil Elbaz, chief executive at Factual, the location data company, said there’s a massive opportunity for startups to help digest and analyze the massive amount of data coming from mobile devices. The challenge, says Elbaz, is folding additional information into location data to help better understand the context of the user…

Why Marketplaces Fail, and How to Make Them Work in Local

Share this:

Earlier this spring, Andrei Hagiu, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, published a piece in the Harvard Business Review looking at why marketplaces fail. Based on recent research, Hagiu, and his co-author Julian Wright, broke down the various pitfalls of building a marketplace, concluding that on the continuum between multi-sided platform and reseller, most businesses fell closer to the reseller end of the spectrum…

Street Fight Daily: Amazon Moves into Groceries, Foursquare Sells to SMBs

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Amazon Plans Major Move into Grocery Business (Reuters)… Foursquare Testing Paid Promotions With NYC Small Businesses (AdAge)… Could Offline Communities Be The Next Big Thing? (Forbes)…

What Investors Look for in a Hyperlocal Startup

Share this:

The hyperlocal industry has seen a spurt of big funding news over the past few months with companies like Booker and FoodPanda nabbing double digit rounds. During an afternoon panel discussion at Street Fight Summit West in San Francisco, Alex Ferrara of Bessemer Venture Partners and Sharon Weinbar, a partner at Scale Venture Capital, broke down the way in which they approach investing in the local space…

Waze VP: What Search Did for the Internet, Maps Will Do for Mobile

Share this:

As the local market readjusts to a mobile-first world, executives from Waze, ESRI, and Placed discussed the role of mobile analytics and mapping in a changed scenario at a panel discussion during the Street Fight Summit West in San Francisco Tuesday…

With the Point-of-Sale, Simple and Open Breeds Success

Share this:

During a panel at the Street Fight Summit West moderated by Mark Canon of IBID Strategic Consulting on Tuesday, Patrick Gauthier, Head of Product Strategy, Retail Services, PayPal; Square’s strategic partnerships chief Chuck Kimble, and Clover CEO Leonard Speiser took a deep dive into the delicate dynamics of bringing local businesses’ payments into the cloud…