News and Analysis
Time to Take a Deep Breath — Local News Isn’t Becoming ‘Extinct’
The editors in charge of the slimmed-down newsrooms of local pure-plays know how to leverage technology, data and other information to produce coverage that, in some cases, is superior to what was produced in the so-called “golden” age of print.
Street Fight Daily: Amazon Tests New Delivery Service, Foursquare Revamps Developer Site
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon Tests Its Own Delivery Service to Rival UPS and FedEx… Foursquare Revamps Its Developer Site as API Usage Soars… Will Messenger Lose Out to Snapchat and Instagram Through 2021?…
Street Fight Daily: Snap Seeks Startups as Advertisers, How AI Could Improve Attribution
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Snapchat Incentivizes Startups, Especially Mobile-First Companies, to Advertise On It… How AI Could Change Attribution Tools… How Ikea Deploys AR to Improve Its Customer Experience…
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Creating a City Guide from Scratch? Maybe if You’re a ‘Cool Kid’
Carlos Gutierrez and and Erika Leal, founding editors of thecoolkidsguide.com, are building a city-guide-cum-entertainment-site for not only big metros but also for smaller, under-served towns (at least that’s the plan). I asked Gutierrez the obvious question first: So many have come and gone; others are moving along (Patch, Yelp, Zvents, Foursquare); still others (LivingSocial, etc.) are morphing toward city guides. Why a city guide?
Street Fight Daily: Square Rolls Out Starbucks Deal, Waze Launches Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… 7,000 Starbucks Locations Added to the Square Wallet (AllThingsD)… Waze Begins Monetization Push with Location-Guided Ads (GigaOm)… Trulia’s Sales Surge as Real Estate Agents Use Mobile (Bloomberg Businessweek)…
5 Ways to Track Calls Coming From Mobile Ads
The true test of a mobile ad’s effectiveness isn’t in page views or click-throughs, but in the number of actual phone calls it drives to a business. Tracking the number of incoming calls that result from a mobile ad is a measureable way for big brands and local businesses to gauge the effectiveness of their digital campaigns. Here are six platforms that businesses can use to get a better sense of how many calls are resulting from their mobile ads.
Antengo CEO: Why Local Classifieds Need to Go Mobile
Antengo is a local marketplace app that allows users and businesses in a city to post classifieds and engage in local, mobile-driven commerce. The app, which is trying to increase and simplify commerce on a local level, just re-designed their app, hoping to expand mobile on-the-go behavior to tablets. Street Fight talked to Founder and CEO Marcus Wandell about how Antengo is changing local commerce, the role of the tablet for location-based apps, and more.
DataSphere Adds Belo to Its Community News Clients
Hyperlocal middleman DataSphere has added Belo Corp. and 14 of its TV stations in top markets to its client list of broadcast chains who have gone digital at the community level. The Belo markets that DataSphere will serve with tech and sales services include Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Seattle/Tacoma and Phoenix…
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)…
AOL: Patch Remains on Path to Profitability, Expenses Cut 30%
During its Q3 earnings call Tuesday, the company reassured investors that the hyperlocal network remained on track to achieve run-rate profitability by Q4 2013, driven by, what AOL COO Artie Minson called, continued revenue growth and “an expense base that was 30% lower than last year.”
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…
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem