News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Target Acquires Grand Junction, Lyft Has Capitalized On Uber’s Woes
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Target Acquires Transportation Company Grand Junction to Expand Same-Day Delivery… Lyft Focuses on Self-Driving Cars But Confirms It’s Gotten a Boost from Uber’s Troubles… Ad Institute Challenges Google and Facebook to Improve Measurement Standards…
Can Yelp Extend Its Moment in the Sun?
“[Yelp has] not been very innovative in approaching the many needs of the SMB markets,” Mike Blumenthal writes to David Mihm. “It would seem that there could be (or should have been?) a raft of functionality that they could provide from appointments to customer follow-up that would be a natural fit.”
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Hyperlocal Sites Making a Church-and-State Mistake?
Hyperlocal news sites are struggling to earn money. In part, that’s because they have imposed the artificial burden of a full church-state separation (ads / news) like the New York Times and other top-flight pubs. In an ideal world, this separation works. But in small town papers or small papers covering hyperlocal areas, church and state will never be separate – and never have been.
Street Fight Daily: Criticism Over Apple Maps, Yahoo Won’t Be Checking-In
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Apple’s Maps Are A Disaster Waiting To Happen (SAI)… Looks Like Yahoo Won’t Be Buying Foursquare (Screenwerk)… Official: Yellow Pages May Be Worthless (Paid Content)…
What Do SMBs Really Need From Digital Platforms?
Amidst the fog of buzzwords and the scramble for investment dollars, are locally targeted startups solving problems that are worth the effort? Within that industry we all generally have a conviction that our products and services matter, but we do spend a lot of our time within a circle of people who don’t need convincing. If our ultimate constituency is the business owner, the question we should ask is: “What really matters to SMBs?”
Street Fight Daily: Square Goes Big, eBay Connects Its Local Dots
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Square Goes Big: Raises $200M at $3.25B Valuation (GigaOm)… EBay’s RedLaser Takes On Shopkick, Adds Geofencing And Deals With Best Buy To Barcode Scanning App (TechCrunch)… Amazon May Follow Apple, Give Google Maps the Boot (Wired)…
Hibu Hooks Up With Closely, Continuing Partnership Push
Amid reports of a creditor takeover, Hibu — formerly the Yell Group — has inked partnerships with Denver-based promotions startup Closely, as well as a U.K.-based payments processor Global Payments to solidify its local marketing suite for small businesses. The moves come four months into the debt-laden publisher’s rebranding efforts…
Street Fight Daily: Hyperlocals at Financial Precipice, Rethinking the ‘Patch Experiment’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… At Precipice, Hyperlocals Face Financial Realities (NetNewsCheck)… The Patch experiment: Don’t drink the Kool-Aid (Amy Jo Brown)… The Mobile/Social/Local/Cloud Land Grab Is Over (TechCrunch)…
MinnPost CEO: ‘Go After Every Stream of Revenue That You Can Think Of’
With five years under its belt, Minnesota- and Twin Cities-centric local site MinnPost has a non-profit model that seems to be working well. The site combines advertising, donations and sponsorships to support its journalism, and it ended 2011 with a slight budget surplus for the second year in a row. Veteran newsman Joel Kramer, the site’s CEO, spoke with Street Fight recently about the importance of not relying on just one revenue model, and about how to treat local news sites like the businesses they are — matching ambitions with the available potential revenue in a given market.
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