News and Analysis
ShopChat Comes Out of Stealth with a Mobile Shopping Keyboard
ShopChat’s newly debuted mobile shopping keyboard works with messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and Apple iMessage, letting users find and share pictures of products through their smartphones with their friends. Those friends can then give feedback, including emojis, and recommendations about the products.
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: 09.12.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
A Groupon deal might boost sales but, it can also lower a merchant’s reputation as measured by Yelp ratings, say computer scientists who have analyzed the link between daily deals and online reviews. (Technology Review)…
Patch is looking for adolescent contributors from high schools — and even middle schools — as it seeks to recruit thousands of community bloggers. (Forbes)…
Mission Local: A Hyperlocal that Does It Right
Over the course of the past few weeks the Mission District of San Francisco has been rocked by two shootings. Mission Local was all over it.The publication is a public-private partnership that publishes stories in English and Spanish focused on this district, which still has a strong Latino population…
Groupon Backs Off Offering
The best or biggest deal, assertion, investment or other strategy this week.
Who: Facebook
What: Pulling back on the IPO throttle
This week Groupon said it would cancel the roadshow for its long-touted IPO, which was set to take place this fall and will now be postponed indefinitely.
Street Fight Daily: 09.09.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Zagat gives Google the best local content in one fell swoop, as well as relationships with thousands of local advertisers, writes Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry. “Now Google can plug the best local content into its many products and have the best local search product. … This is important because local is the next big online advertising opportunity. Daily deals are just the tip of the iceberg.” (Business Insider)…
“Local is going to be big; I think everyone realizes that,” says Sameet Sinha, a senior analyst at B. Riley. “But in this sort of capital markets environment, long-term projects aren’t given much leeway, especially a project like Patch that is much more people intensive than tech intensive.” It’s just “not something that should have been undertaken by a company the size of AOL.” (PEHub)…
Recommendation Engine Bizzy Couples Check-outs With Foursquare Check-ins
ReachLocal subsidiary Bizzy has released an update to their recommendation application this morning that integrates Foursquare check-ins with their trademark rating feature, the “check-out.” Like SpotOn, Bizzy allows users to rate and share their opinions of local businesses with followers and friends as well as discover cafes, bars, and restaurants through personalized recommendations that draw on users social graphs and previous ratings…
Street Fight Daily: 09.08.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Echoecho is a simple service that lets people request location updates from friends in their phone address book, who then can decide whether to respond with their coordinates. The company announced yesterday that it has raised $750,000 in seed funding from Google Ventures and United Kingdom-based PROFounders Capital. (GigaOm)…
“It seems to me that Digital First is much more likely to solve the problem of building strong — and profitable — web-based local media than is AOL’s Patch,” writes Felix Salmon. “The first and most important reason is that local newspapers are, and always have been, the first best source of local ad-sales talent. … On the other side of the editorial divide, local newspapers are also the first best source of local news, and are generally much more respected and trusted in local communities than any cookie-cutter Patch site is likely to become.” (Reuters)…
FundsOn: Deals Site’s Charitable Twist – Getting by Giving Back
Charu Chundury was once an entrepreneur focused on software to help manage local youth sports. But these days, he sees an opportunity to tweak the model for charitable giving with an “effort-free” hyperlocal product aimed at the $290 billion a year consumers spend — all the while benefitting small businesses and consumers. How so? With a new company called FundsOn.
Daily Deals 2.0: Card-Connected Offers
Banks now know more than practically anyone about consumer spending behaviors and they are rapidly entering the digital marketing and local commerce space. Many have rolled out programs that leverage technology to offer customers truly digital deals from merchants of all types via their existing credit or debit cards…
Street Fight Daily: 09.07.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Add Groupon Inc. to the list of hot new Web companies having second thoughts about whether now is a good time to go public. The daily deals website, which is expected to fetch a $20 billion valuation upon its stock-market debut, canceled its investor roadshow and is reevaluating plans for an initial public offering in the face of stock-market volatility. (Wall Street Journal)…
Location-based services are becoming more commonplace tools for mobile users, but check-in services appear to be facing a tough road to adoption, according to new figures from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The organization found that 28 percent of American adults use some form of mobile and social location-based services to get directions or recommendations, or to check into a location. But Pew found that only 4 percent of adults use their phones specifically for check-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla, the same as in November. (GigaOm)…
Street Fight’s Big 3
Street Fight Columns
Street Fight Categories
The Road Ahead: What Autonomous Cars Teach Us About Marketing Automation