News and Analysis

On the Various Challenges Facing European Publishers (and Some Solutions)

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“As audiences age out, the number of print subscribers will plummet, and as older small business owners retire, old ways of doing business … retire with them as well,” David Mihm writes to Mike Blumenthal. “Legacy media companies that don’t evolve rapidly are going to be left with no audience and no customers.”

Street Fight Daily: Walmart Acts as Media Platform, Amazon Courts Grocers

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Inside Walmart’s Advertising Blitz… Amazon Slashes Seller Fees to Improve Grocery Sales Online… Mobile, YouTube, and Programmatic Are Alphabet’s Workhorses…

Street Culture: ‘OKRs’ and Omotenashi Lead the Culture at Button

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OKRs – that’s “Objectives and Key Results” – are one of the drivers of culture at deep-linking software company Button. “OKRs are a major influencer to recruiting, internal interactions, how we onboard new employees, everything,” says Stephanie Mardell, Button’s head of people.

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: PayPal Guns For Square, Groupon’s Lefkofsky Speaks

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.PayPal Debuts iPad App, Furthering Rivalry With Square (AllThingsD)… Eric Lefkofsky’s First Interview As Groupon’s CEO (Fast Company)… Study: 55 Percent Of Mobile-Search Driven Conversions Happen In One Hour Or Less (Search Engine Land)…

Overlaying Local: Do We Want Listings in Context?

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Maponics is working on an initiative that includes overlays of demographics and what they call “lifestyle data” on top of maps. The idea is to create a value-added component to traditional maps that may help to bring primary mapping information into a meaningful context for users…

Why Redbeacon Founder Ethan Anderson Returned to Local

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A little over a year after selling Redbeacon to Home Depot, the company’s founder is back on the scene with a new startup, MyTime. Street Fight recently caught up with Anderson to talk about life after Redbeacon, building a local marketplace, and finding a seam in a cluttered hyperlocal space…

Street Fight Daily: Verifone CEO Out, Passbook Still Disappoints

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.VeriFone’s Bergeron Out After Outlook Misses Estimates  (BloombergBusinessweek)… iPhone Passbook: Six Months On and It Still Disappoints (ZDNet)… Google Concedes That Drive-by Prying Violated Privacy (New York Times)…

SXSW: Foursquare’s Crowley Wants to Leverage ‘Active’ Recommendations

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As Foursquare’s user base expands and its database of grows past 3 billion data points, the company’s CEO says the amount of data available will increasingly make location a fulcrum for leveraging behavior modification.

6 Platforms For Booking Local Services

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Platforms that allow consumers to book appointments with service-based professionals (like plumbers, electricians, and mechanics) are disrupting the way local services have traditionally been scheduled. Here are six platforms working to change the way local, service-based businesses schedule appointments with consumers…

SXSW: With Pivot, Zaarly’s Focus Shifts to Merchants

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Zaarly rolled out its “storefronts” initiative last fall, and soon will completely drop the consumer-generated request model it was founded around to shift entirely to a storefront selling approach. From a hyperlocal marketing perspective, one of the most profound effects of this is the way Zaarly is now counting on sellers to bring in buyers…

Street Fight Daily: Google Delivers Same-Day, Local Search on Mobile

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Google Shopping Express Test Partners Include Target And Other Local SF Stores (TechCrunch)… Only 29% Of Consumers Regularly Use Mobile Devices To Find Local Businesses (Search Engine Land)… Retailer Enthusiasm for Mobile Payments Tempered by Power Struggles in Industry (Mobile Commerce Daily)…

Why Local Online Publishers Should Also Be Designing Merchants’ Sites

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One of the most sustainable sources of income for local digital publishers ought to be web design and hosting for their local customers. Web design and hosting has counted for 20% of my company’s total annual revenue for the last five years. It’s a natural fit for publishers in so many ways, and yet I see very few who offer it. They’re missing out big time…

Defining the Local Coefficient: A Conversation with Yelp

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A growing chunk of physical purchases are influenced online. And the path to purchase increasingly weaves between different screens. But for conversions, it’s all about offline. The question is how long this will remain to be the case. Out of sheer curiosity, Yelp VP Mike Ghaffary ventured to quantify this…