News and Analysis

Through This Ourglass, Watching TV in Public Is More Fun

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“Making TV smarter” has been the mantra for many a failed startup over the years. I won’t tell the sad tale of AOL TV, which I helped build content for. That said, Ourglass is approaching things a little differently: targeting TV out-of-home and looking to make public experiences with the tube more fun and useful.

Street Fight Daily: Uber Fires Self-Driving Car Architect, Google Tests Personalized Search

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Fires Former Google Engineer at Heart of Self-Driving Dispute… Google Tests Personalized Search, Likely a Future Ad Targeting Weapon… How to Differentiate Among the Many Marketing Automation Companies…

Foursquare Extends Industry Reach With New Reddit Partnership

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Foursquare is announcing a new partnership with Reddit this morning, as the location technology firm looks to expand its reach within the social technology space. With Foursquare on board, Reddit users will now have the option of adding their real-time location to any mobile post.

Latest Posts

2011 Local Commerce M&A Saw Most Activity in Daily Deals

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2011 was an intensely active year for the local marketing and commerce M&A market, with 186 transactions logged — up 40% from 2010. Many major companies that have local components to their business (led by Groupon, Google, LivingSocial and eBay) are making important strategic moves in the space to solidify their products…

Hyperlocals and Fair Use: When Content Aggregation Becomes a Liability

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Wholesale copying of other content without permission will lead to trouble for hyperlocals. Using short excerpts, as part of a news or commentary with proper attribution and a direct link to the original site, may be protected from infringement claims under the fair use doctrine…

New Apps Facilitate Real-World Connections Via LBS

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Business conferences and festivals can be a great way to meet and connect with people who have similar interests — as well as potential business partners. But many people have encountered the difficulty of actually finding the right connections amidst a sea of people. A new cadre of location apps aimed at this problem took center stage last week at the South by Southwest Interactive festival, targeting both business and personal use cases…

Street Fight Daily: Glassmap and Privacy, Judging Highlight

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...

Why Highlight Wasn’t A Breakout Success At SXSW (TechCrunch)

Glassmap’s Founders Get Clear About Online Privacy (GigaOm)

Retailers Strike Back in Mobile Wars With … People (Ad Age)

Placed Snags $3.4M in Funding To Bring Location Analytics to Developers

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The location analytics startup emerged from a 13-month stealth period yesterday, announcing Series A funding as well the release of a new product for mobile app developers. Placed for Developers is a free SDK that enables developers of location-aware apps to analyze the real-world context in which their products are being used…

Topix Launches New Site, Politix, to Capitalize on Election Interest

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The network of hyperlocal aggregation sites is set to launch a new politically focused editorial/interactive product that will leverage its base of 10 million users nationwide to solicit reactions to curated news items, topical questions, and sentiment polls.

Loopt and Green Dot: A Storified View

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What’s the future of location-based services? One path may be mobile commerce, where LBS platforms bring a key loyalty tool. That seems to be one explanation for the $43 million acquisition of LBS Loopt last week by banking company Green Dot, which is known mainly for its prepaid cards for retailers.

So how did it shake out in the Twitterverse, in blogs and general media? Here’s our Storified roundup:

PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — INTRO, Wallit, Momentfeed

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In this week’s video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan look at location-based dating with Eskimi; INTRO’s bid to be a mobile business connector; Wallit’s virtual augmented walls and Instagram. Plus, special guest Rob Reed from Momentfeed.

Street Fight Daily: PayPal Here’s Squeeze on Square; Truth in Online Ad Numbers; Groupon Fines

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups: How PayPal Here Could Lay the Hurt on Square and Others (GigaOm)… What’s ‘Reality’ When Calculating Online Ad Numbers for Local TV & Radio? (BIA/Kelsey)… Groupon UK Told to Clean Up After Record Complaints (GigaOm)… AOL Snaps Up Hyperlocal Photosharing App Hipster (TechCrunch)… and more:

Do Datasphere’s 50M UVs Make It a Model for Hyperlocal Scale?

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What Datasphere excels at is scaling, with superb technology — and, of course, finding that sweet spot between the aggregators and high-cost editorial operations. Is this the future of hyperlocal? The 50 million unique visitors to their TV stations’ community sites have provided a kind of answer…