News and Analysis

Street Fight Daily: Big Retailers Support Mobile Payments, Snap Ads Struggle to Grab User Attention

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Amazon, Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks Drive Mobile Payment Behaviors… How Do Users Like Snapchat Ads?… AOL’s CEO Explains that Oath is About B2B Branding…

5 Ways Retailers Are Using Marketing Tech to Support Personalization Efforts

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The notion that marketers don’t have access to the types of data they need to improve the relevancy of their marketing efforts is a fallacy. Most retail brands already have everything they need, it’s just a matter of using the data in creative ways to generate more personalized content for consumers.

MapQuest Tackling More Location Data and Services Under Verizon Ownership

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Elise Neel, the head of MapQuest for business, spoke to Street Fight recently about the ways marketers now regard and value location data, the role mixed reality may play in mapping, and what it means for MapQuest to operate under Verizon’s ownership.

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Street Fight Daily: 10.24.11

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

Groupon Now! generated just $1 million of gross billings in September, despite being available in 25 markets — only $40k per market. In other words, the product that Groupon is telling investors to view as the future of the company, still represents less than 1% of Groupon’s total gross billings in North America. (Yipit Blog)…

Group buying sites in China are reaching 42 million customers according to figures released by The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). The figure represents an increase of 125% on the previous the year’s business, with the country’s group buying industry now estimated to reach 8.7% of China’s Internet users. (The Next Web)…

What BuyWithMe (And All Daily Deals Companies) Could Learn From Woot

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We here at Street Fight and other media sources have been calling for a big consolidation in the daily deals market for some time now. But consolidation can take two forms. To date, that has been acquisitions. Going forward, there may be more outright closures. Woot did an amazing job in the daily deals space before getting acquired by Amazon last year. What Woot was trying to pull off, however, was far less complicated than what is being attempted in the local deals space right now…

Local Quotables: BJ Emerson, Joe Meyer, Tim O’Shaugnessy and more…

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In this week’s column, of all people, the VP of technology at Tasti-D-Lite, BJ Emerson, turned a sharp tongue on location-based services at the LocNav conference in San Jose (“they used to call it ‘stalking'”). Jim Brady talked scale; Joe Meyer described the realization that there was a business in local companies; and one small business owner cleverly noted that Twitter and Facebook don’t do a local merchant much good “if people don’t know where you are located.” Read all of this week’s the wise words and wise-cracks around and about the hyperlocal industry.

Street Fight Daily: 10.21.11

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

Groupon has put to rest speculation about its IPO. It is on, albeit at a slightly lower valuation than originally expected. It intends to raise between $480 million to $540 million in the public markets, setting a valuation range between $10.1 billion and $11.4 billion. (AllThingsD)…

“The daily deal companies are version 1.0 of great things you can build with the Internet that help local merchants drive foot traffic into the door,” says Dennis Crowley in an interview. “What we are doing with Foursquare is version 2.” (TechCrunch)…

What Independent Hyperlocals Need for the Long Haul

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The surging growth of hyperlocal news—today there are more than 3,000 sites in operation and hundreds more in various stages of formation—is being driven by independents. The media disrupters are the people who have the passion and gumption to develop and run their sites with financing from their own personal credit cards.

I’m thinking of entrepreneurs like Debbie Galant, who with $3,000 co-founded  Baristanet in the crowded media market of northern New Jersey in 2004,  expanding it to seven communities. And Scott Brodbeck who, while he was completing a master’s program, started ARLNow in  Arlington, Va., in suburban Washington D.C.

Case Study: The Trouble with Mobile Marketing for a Small Town Restaurant

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At Chattan Loch Bistro & Public House in Bellefontaine, Ohio (pop. 13,069), owner Tracy McPherson is struggling to find cost-effective ways to reach customers in her small town. After a promising start with Foursquare in 2010—when customers were checking-in and claiming specials at least a couple days a week—McPherson says interest in the app has waned, in part due to a lack of resources at the restaurant. She now relies on a mix of local ads, email newsletters, and successful beer and wine clubs to get new customers through the door.

Street Fight Daily: 10.20.11

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

Groupon is seeking to sell shares in an offering that would value the company at close to $12 billion. The valuation is a steep comedown from earlier expectations that an I.P.O. of the Internet darling could value the company as much as $25 billion to $30 billion. (New York Times/Dealbook)…

Ownlocal has announcing a new round of investment from a string of investors including the Knight Enterprise Fund, Automattic, the makers of WordPress, and a number of prominent angels. The company creates web services for small businesses through partnerships with local media outlets and other organizations. (GigaOm)…

HopStop Launches Self-Serve Local Ad Play

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Hopstop, the navigation service that pioneered point-to-point transit directions six years ago, has launched an advertising product aimed at local marketers. The self-serve platform allows local merchants to target HopStop users who search for directions to or from their neighborhood with a short call-to-action ad…

Jim Brady Reflects on WaPo, ‘Blown Up’ TBD and the Do or Die Future of Local

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Combine digital community journalism and the New York Jets? Jim Brady might call that heaven. The longtime leader in online journalism and hyperlocal endeavors (though he avoids the term hyperlocal) seems to expend as much Twitter juice on the finer points of the team’s play as he does on crowdsourcing the news. But just barely. Fact is Brady is one of the most recognized editorial leaders in online news going back to washingtonpost.com (the first time … ya know, in the ’90s) then AOL, then Washington Post 2.0, next TBD and now the Journal Register Company. Before he gets picked up by the Jets as a mid-season PR QB, I thought it a good time to catch up…

Street Fight Daily: 10.19.11

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

Daily deals are coming to the radio. Clear Channel, the media giant that owns 850 stations, has made an exclusive deal with LivingSocial to offer its discount offerings on 500 of its stations, the companies announced on Tuesday. (New York Times/Media Decoder)…

Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley expects the company to remain independent for another year, but admits he’s open to an acquisition: “The only thing we want to do is build a product,” Crowley said. “If we do it independently that’s great, if we do it as part of a company that’s another story.” (Business Insider)…