News and Analysis
LBMA Podcast: Facebook, KFC China, Verizon
This Week in Location Based Marketing is a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association with Asif Khan and Aubriana Lopez. On the show: Wasteless, Hong Kong tourism, Nestle Purina PetCare, Gravy Analytics + V12. Special Guest: Casey Binkley from Hauler Ads.
Street Fight Daily: Alphabet Mulls Big Investment in Lyft, Pubs Not Making Money on Facebook
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amid Waymo-Uber Drama, Alphabet Considers Lyft Investment of About $1 Billion… Study Finds Publishers Are Not Making Much Money on Facebook… Why Amazon Is the New Google for Buying…
Will Local News Providers Make Virtual Reality an Actual Strategy?
Trying to predict how popular VR will become is difficult because the most accessible virtual experiences so far, like those achieved with Google Cardboard and the New York Times’ “360 videos,” reveal only a glimpse of VR’s potential.
Latest Posts
Apple Maps: Taking the Long View
There’s no dancing around the fact that the much-anticipated launch of Apple Maps has turned into a fiasco for the company. Yet there’s little doubt Apple will buff out this particular blemish with time. The interesting part will be seeing exactly how the company chooses to address the gap in expertise that led to the current sub-par product. A big acquisition of talent or technology seems likely…
We’ve Seen the Past — And It Is ‘The Neighborhood’
For the past few years, social startups have been spiraling inward toward a smaller and smaller target: your neighborhood, your block. Now Patch is going all in by to leverage neighborhoods through communities of interest. But maybe neighborhoods are an artificial constructs, with borders that mean little even to those they bind. If that’s the case, we need to rethink a lot more than design and tools and lessons of the past…
Nimble Commerce Expands Off of White-Label Model, Launches Deal Exchange
White label deal purveyor Nimble Commerce has taken a page from the online advertising industry’s book, rolling out an offers exchange this morning to play matchmaker between local publishers and sales forces. Called Nimble Network, the product takes much of the thinking from only ad exchanges and applies it to the deals space…
Wanderful Media Launches, Aiming to Pick Up Where Retail Circulars Left Off
Wanderful Media, backed by some of the biggest names in the newspaper publishing business, is hoping it can take a chunk from the disrupted circular advertising business with a lean-back service for tablets that allows users to find items and deals they weren’t specifically seeking…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Snaps Up Savored, Ebay’s Mobile Momentum
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Groupon Moves Into Restaurant Reservations With Savored Deal (New York Times)… EBay’s Mobile Momentum: 100M App Downloads, 100M Items Listed (All Things D)… Data Firm Hits Craigslist With Monopoly Claim (GigaOm)…
iOS6: Can Google Beat Apple in its Own Backyard?
Mapping is a game ultimately won on function rather than form. This requires lots of listings data and search algorithms; in other words, things that are non-core to Apple. Relative to Google’s tenure in this area, Apple is only starting to stitch together local vertical content partners like Yelp and TomTom. And it’s already starting to show…
7 Reporting Tools for Hyperlocal Journalists
It can be difficult for journalists covering hyperlocal news events to find enough relevant information and quality sources to generate the types of comprehensive articles and reports that readers find useful. Here are seven tools that hyperlocal journalists can use to streamline the process of gathering data and generating the types of multiplatform content that readers embrace…
Street Fight Daily: Village Voice Sold, Groupon Cuts Loom
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Village Voice Media Execs Acquire The Company’s Famed Alt Weeklies, Form New Holding Company (TechCrunch)… As Groupon’s New Operations Czar Seeks to Streamline, Job Cuts Loom (Crain’s Chicago Business)… Local Search Cage Match: Google Vs. Apple Maps (And Siri) (Search Engine Land)…
Patch Redesign Emphasizes Social as Path to Revenue Growth
AOL’s hyperlocal news network released a major redesign Sunday evening, pushing the platform away from a traditional editorial news property and into a more social, user-driven service. The move marks the beginning of what AOL CEO Tim Armstrong called “phase two” in the company’s evolution…
BxB Recap: Is This the Future of Local News?
The passion with the group at Block by Block isn’t just about great journalism — it’s about turning online journalism into a business; it’s about leveraging existing tools and creating new ones; and most importantly it’s about working to collaboratively across these businesses to make an impact…
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Meta Is Automating Ads, But Brands Still Face a Bigger Problem