News and Analysis

Hyperlocal Pioneer Howard Owens Sees New Mobile App as Key to Scaling Beyond His ‘Batavian’

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Eight and a half years after launching his hyperlocal news site The Batavian, in upstate New York, Howard Owens is looking at growing his base company, Album Corp., beyond Batavia to multiple locations. His plan for expansion is driven by a homemade mobile app that he’s experimenting with for the site.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Unveils Tools for Brand Marketing, How the Best Brands Do Mobile

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Two New Facebook Tools Will Help Brands Craft Ads for Every Environment… What Sets the Best Brands in Mobile Apart from the Pack… Understanding Amazon as an Advertising Platform…

Brands Struggle to Keep Up with Demand for Cross-Channel Personalization

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Consumers want offline shopping experiences to be just as personalized as online, but new research from the customer data firm Segment shows that most major brands are failing to meet those expectations.

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With New Self-Serve Product, Weather Channel Eyes SMB Spend

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Late last week the company began piloting a new self-serve interface in a move to open its advertising platform to small and medium-sized business — a new market for the company. Built on top of PaperG’s white-label interface, the product is still in its early days…

PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — CrowdOptic

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In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan look at Guardly’s indoor emergency services; Banjo is chosen by Google+; Qualcomm’s greatest location advertising campaign ever; Hot Wheels tweets for Cameros; Sonar introduces us to the Bing Fund; and Andrew Mason shows his character…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s New Feed, Plum District Founder Out

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Don’t Laugh at Zuckerberg’s Newspaper Metaphor, It’s More Accurate Than You Think (PadnoDaily)… CEO And Founder Megan Gardner Out At Mom-Centric Deals Site Plum District, Ex-Googler Susan Kim Takes Over (TechCrunch)… AOL’s CEO to Haters: Our Content Strategy Was Right After All (and Patch is Fine Too) (Paid Content)…

Deep Cuts Brought Daily Voice Back From the Brink

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Faced with uneasy investors and a cash burn of $500,000 a month, the company’s founder Carll Tucker wondered last weekend: “Is this it?” But after 48 hours of number crunching, Tucker finally came up with a one-page document that he was convinced would be Daily Voice’s passport to a secure future…

Banjo Founder: ‘Emotional Connection’ Is Key for Mobile

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In less than a year, social discovery app Banjo has jumped from fewer than a million users to over four million. The mobile service allows users to discover real-time data across social networks and learn more about places, and it recently launched a tablet app. Street Fight caught up with Banjo founder and CEO Damien Patton to chat about the future of mobile, making money, and the value of data…

5 Can’t-Miss SXSWi Panels for the Local-Obsessed

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The annual SXSW Interactive Festival starts tomorrow and runs through Tuesday. With five days packed with a wide range of panels and presentations, the confab can be thrilling and overwhelming at the same time. Here are five sessions focused on the future of local and social that Street Fight readers will be especially interested in…

Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Sales Record, Foursquare Updates Check-in

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Struggling Deals Site LivingSocial Just Hit A Crucial Sales Record (Business Insider)… The Check In Is Dead; Long Live The Check In As Foursquare Adds Quick Glide Feature On iOS (TechCrunch)… Groupon Board Is Said to Focus CEO Search on External Candidates (Bloomberg)…

Conference Notebook: Digital Companies Look to Leverage Legacy Sales Forces

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As more legacy local media and yellow pages companies look to position themselves as a marketing agency for local businesses, reseller relationships should provide both sides of the market with solid value in the near-term…

Case Study: Nationwide Property Manager Uses PPC, SEO to Boost ROI

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At Lincoln Property Company, vice president Jennifer Staciokas takes a holistic approach to marketing the 140,000+ apartment units her company currently manages. By creating independent community websites focused on the local areas that Lincoln Property serves, along with aggressive PPC, retargeting and SEO campaigns managed by ReachLocal, the management firm has been able to increase conversion rates and boost the number of signed leases…

Street Fight Daily: Groupon to Stick with Model, Retailigence Nabs $6.3M

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Groupon CFO: No Changes to Business Model (Wall Street Journal)… Local Search Update for Google Maps iOS Could Hurt Yelp (Venture Beat)… Retailigence Bags $6.3M for Online-to-Offline Marketing (Vator News)…