News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Duopoly’s Strength Exceeds Expectations, Pubs Struggle with Apple News
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google and Facebook Tighten Grip on US Digital Ad Market… Publishers Continue to Encounter Problems with Apple New… Alphabet’s Waymo Wants Uber to Pay $2.6 Billion for Single Stolen Trade Secret…
How Showroom Concept Stores Are Changing the Retail Industry
A number of major retailers and startups have been pioneering a local showrooming strategy, divorcing the purchasing of products from the distribution, and focusing more on experiences than in-person sales. Here are six examples of retailers that have been able to navigate this merchandise-free (or light) approach to local retail.
Street Fight Daily: Pinterest Empowers Brands, Uber Sues an Agency
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Brands Can Now Tap Pinterest’s Pin Collective Via a Self-Serve Customer Platform (AdWeek) Pinterest formed Pin Collective last October as a way to give brands access to the social network’s best content creators—publishers, production shops and individuals—to work directly with them on their campaigns. How […]
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Street Fight Daily: Waze Helps FEMA, Springer Continues Classifieds Push
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… How Waze’s Crowd-Sourced Data Helped FEMA Deliver the Gas After Sandy (GigaOm)… Buying Another Classified Site, Springer Sees Digital Filling Print Gap (Paid Content)… Tree Maps and Dwindling Cigarettes: One Hyperlocal Site’s Approach to Sandy (The New York Observer)…
How One Hyperlocal Editor and His Site Chased, and Were Chased by, Sandy
When a gigantic “frankenstorm” knocks out the power for your reporters and many other contributors, how can a hyperlocal site keep its coverage online and help its community? Here’s how The Alternative Press, the 19-site, 34-community network in suburban New Jersey, did it last week under the direction of founding editor and publisher Mike Shapiro.
Memo to Google: Solve the Local Data Problem With Local Data
I think we can now state definitively that the big upsurge in claimed listings that might have occurred as a result of Google’s choice to embed local listings within its social network, a little over five months ago, will not happen on its own. Rather than achieving Facebook levels of adoption, Google+ Local is still an arena where participation depends heavily on early adopters as well as the assistance of local SEO consultants and companies like mine…
Local Corp. Survey: SMBs ‘Cautiously Optimistic’
A new survey released by Local Corporation has found that 92% of small business owners are influenced by the national economy. In recent months, 46% have considered raising prices, while 40% have considered cutting back on marketing. Local Corporation CEO Heath Clarke says the uncertain economic climate has focused SMBs on getting the most ROI for their marketing dollars.
Managing Through Crisis: Yext, Patch & GramercyOne in Superstorm Sandy
We asked three hyperlocal companies based in New York City, Patch, GramercyOne and Yext, to share the details on how they dealt with Superstorm Sandy. Their experiences shared the same urgency around helping their employees find shelter and safety. But they way they kept the day-to-day work going differed, largely reflecting the differences in their businesses: while Yext set up temporary headquarters in Times Square; Patch told everyone to stay home and kept operations humming with a remote workforce; meanwhile, GramercyOne leaned on tools that didn’t require location or physical presence.
Inside Patch During Superstorm Sandy
In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, a big news event for hyperlocal publishers, we asked Patch’s chief content officer Rachel Feddersen to give us the scoop on how the AOL unit managed its own business during the storm: “When my colleagues and I weren’t able to commute to the city during the storm and in the days following, we just joined our field work force.”
From (Temporary) Yext HQ During Superstorm Sandy
When the power went out on Yext’s offices in Chelsea Market in New York City, the team scrambled to find new work space and take care of its employees. Event halls where conferences had been canceled delivered even more space than the company had in its permanent offices, and employees were put up in hotels so that they were free to focus on work instead of water and power. “People were happy to get back together, and the atmosphere is very focused.”
In Superstorm Sandy, GramercyOne Carries on Through the Cloud
As a provider of cloud based software, GramercyOne, based in lower Manhattan, embraced these systems for internal infrastructure and despite the office and surrounding area being completely offline and inaccessible, all of its mission critical systems, including its SaaS application used by thousands of businesses, was fully operational. Here, CEO Josh McCarter shares his company’s and his personal experiences through the storm and its aftermath.
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