News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Google Makes Maps Interactive, Amazon Rolls Out ‘Instant Pickup’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Brings Q&A to Maps, Further Entering the Local Recommendation Space… Amazon Adds ‘Instant Pickup’ in U.S. Brick-and-Mortar Push… Aiming for Transformation via Acquisition, Non-Tech Companies Buy Tech Firms…
Latest Posts
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.
Who’s Coming and Going at Groupon, Delivery.com, LocalVox, YP & more
Big changes at Delivery.com with several new members of the management team; a new head of marketing at LocalVox; Groupon brings on an executive to focus on accounting from the C-level; and lots of jobs on offer in sales, marketing and business development at Foursquare, Patch, LocalVox, Factual, Apple and more.
PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — Choco-locate
In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan look at what an airport’s location tech might have to do with James Joyce. Australia shows us how to do disaster notifications with LBS. STMicroelectronics kills us with air pressure — in a good way. All this plus a few deals, an acquisition, Tasti D-lite’s new book and special guest Lalita Krishna of Choco-locate…
Why TV Remains the Heartbeat of Local Connection