News and Analysis

GoDaddy Balances Tech and Self-Service in a Fragmented Marketplace

“The way that you cut through the noise is to build products and services that are loved by the people who use them so much that they proactively tell their neighbor next to them, or proactively tell the business group they are a part of,” says the company’s product chief, Steven Aldrich.

Report: Beacons Making Sizable Impact on Retail

The Proximity.Directory Q1 2017 Report shows that 75% of retailers in the U.S. are integrating proximity technologies into their marketing mix to increase operating profit. By using beacon technology, retailers can improve their position and increase operating profit by nearly 9% with an ROI of 175%, according to the report.

Street Fight Daily: Snap Launches New Ad Buying Tools, Facebook’s Mobile Bump Evens Out

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Snapchat Is Opening Itself Up to Advertisers of All Sizes with New Buying Tools… Facebook’s Days of Easy Growth from the Shift to Mobile May Be Over… Consumers Can Stomach Ads in News Feeds, Research Shows…

Latest Posts

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…

How Dating’s Personalized, Localized Future is Good for Groupon

Groupon’s long awaited IPO was wildly oversubscribed, according to AllThingsD – by a factor of $10. The stock priced initially at $20 per share, well over the target pricing of $16 to $18. Considering all the bad press Groupon has endured and slings and arrows from wary small businesspeople and grumpy old CPAscalling for an […]

Local Quotables: BJ Emerson, John Paton, Matt McAlister and more…

The best words about and around the hyperlocal industry. Lots of talk about Groupon this week — its friends-and-family start; who its competitors are; what merchants think. Yipit’s Jim Moran makes a quip about the Groupon-Living Social rivarly. In non-Groupon news, John Paton extends an apology in response to a controversial Journal Register article, and […]

Hyperlocals and School Coverage: Where’s the Big Picture?

Hyperlocals could do a much better job covering the biggest news in their communities — the schools. What’s happening in schools is big news not just for parents but everybody hyperlocals are trying to reach. Hyperlocals should be all over the big-picture story. But from what I see, they aren’t…