News and Analysis

Openings and New Hires at Buzzboard, inMarket, and SITO Mobile

Every two weeks, Geoff Michener covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. This week’s edition includes moves and new openings at Ninth Decimal, Netsertive, and Instacart.

Raise Report: Sense360, Yieldify, Heap Secure New Funding

Every two weeks, we round up some of the biggest fundraises taking place in hyperlocal marketing, commerce, and tech. This week’s edition includes funding for LoveCrafts, Orbital Insight, Bonsai, and Farmdrop.

Street Fight Daily: Can Walmart Compete with Amazon?, Uber Slapped with Federal Inquiry

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Can Walmart’s Expensive New E-Commerce Operation Compete with Amazon?… Uber Faces Federal Inquiry Over Use of Greyball Tool to Avoid Authorities… Mark Zuckerberg Is Still in No Hurry to Monetize Facebook Messenger…

Latest Posts

Passive Profits? A Discussion with Grabio and Others Leading the Way

With the dawn of smartphones and geo-fences (a virtual radius that can be used to alert devices when they breach the invisible border) passive mobile computing can be taken to a higher level…

Street Fight Daily: 11.09.11

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

Yelp Hires Goldman and Citigroup to Lead I.P.O. (NYT/Dealbook)
Yelp, the online reviews site for local businesses, has hired Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to lead its initial public offering of stock, which is expected to value the company at $1.5 billion to $2 billion…

CrowdMob Builds a Tapjoy+Groupon for Distributing Local Deals (GigaOm)
The company offers merchants and retailers a way to distribute their local deals through third-party apps, incentivizing mobile users to buy a deal in exchange for virtual currency or goods…

Will the 2012 Election Be a Hyperlocal Breakthrough?

As we approach 2012, hyperlocal sites and networks around the country are gearing up to leverage their content and attract what promises to be a huge windfall of political advertising. At the recent Street Fight Summit in New York, we gathered four top executives who are already thinking deeply about the potential opportunity for hyperlocal in next year’s election cycle…

Gilt City’s City Unlisted: Merging Commerce and Content

Gilt City, the group-buying offshoot of luxury commerce brand Gilt Groupe, has — among other things — built its business on developing a strong editorial voice mostly through the selection and presentation of its offers. In May, however, the company launched an under-the-radar beta project called City Unlisted to experiment with an alternative approach to pairing content and commerce…

Case Study: Non-Profit Uses Foursquare For Fundraising

At BART stations in the Bay Area in 2010, commuters were encouraged to check-in on Foursquare to posters placed by Earthjustice, a non-profit focused on environmental awareness, as part of an effort to gain traction in the tech community. They hit 6,000 in just a few months’ time and earned media as well, in the New York Times, Mashable and elsewhere. Senior marketing manager Ray Wan discusses the organization’s strategy.

Street Fight Daily: 11.08.11

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

Daily-Deal Sites Face Problems Ahead, Report Says (Wall Street Journal)
Forrester Research e-commerce analyst Sucharita Mulpuru says in report that the deal sites face challenges that threaten to slow down, if not end their businesses…

Starbucks Taps China’s Foursquare for Holiday Check-in Campaign (Ad Age)
While Foursquare slowly experiments with near-field communication technologies here in the U.S., one of its Chinese lookalikes is rolling out a massive NFC-powered campaign in Eastern China…

Tuning into Consumers’ Digital Signals

At the Street Fight Summit in October, sponsor GeoIQ unveiled a report it co-sponsored, Tuning into Consumers’ Digital Signals, which was prepared by Dr. Phil Hendrix, director of immr and GigaOm Pro analyst. An introduction follows, including a link to the full 27-page PDF at the bottom of this post.

How Will the “Check-in” Behavior Evolve?

Just as it began to wane, the attention paid to Foursquare as the darling of the geo-social world has reemerged in the wake of the app’s version 4.0.2 release. Two Foursquare execs were on hand to dive deeper into the update during the recent Street Fight Summit in New York…

Drawing the Line on Advertorial Content for Hyperlocals

One way to boost revenue for a hyperlocal news site may be to supplement editorial content with paid content — such as advertorials, sponsored reviews, or endorsements. But a hyperlocal publisher who takes this path may walk into a legal landmine unless they’re completely transparent in distinguishing its editorial content from its paid content…

Street Fight Daily: 11.07.11

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

Combined Urban Airship + Simple Geo Take $15 Million in Funding (Uncrunched)
It looks like Simple Geo may have made a solid bet after all. Last week the company was acquired by Urban Airship in an all stock transaction that was actually part of a much larger financing: Urban Airship’s Series C round of funding…

Kevin Rose’s Oink: Stop Rating Places – Rate the Stuff Inside Them Instead (SiliconFilter)
The big difference between Oink and Foursquare or Yelp is that Oink doesn’t focus on places so much as on the things inside them. Instead of rating a local restaurant, for example, you would rate the pizza you had there…