News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Amazon’s Brick-and-Mortar Ambitions, Uber Suspends Self-Driving Cars After Crash
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google’s YouTube Has Continued Showing Objectionable Ads Despite Advertiser Pushback… Uber Takes Self-Driving Cars Off the Road After One Flips Over in Arizona… Amazon’s Ambitions Unboxed: Brick-and-Mortar Stores for Appliances, Furniture, and More…
Street Fight Daily: Uber’s Secret Tools Undercut Competitors, Marketers Take on Google
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… ShopTalk ’17: Retail Brands Focus on Amazon ‘Work-Arounds’… Uber Employees Still Use Secret Tools to Target Drivers and Undercut Competition… Opportunity Knocks: Marketers and Media Take On Google…
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Street Fight Daily: 09.13.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
With Foursquare having won the battle for the check in, Gowalla has undergone a serious transformation. Technically version 4.0, the new version bears little resemblance to the previous versions of the app. Gowalla is no longer predominantly a check-in service. That’s still one aspect of it, but the idea is now to focus on two key areas: travel and storytelling. (TechCrunch)…
The daily deals market is still a bit chaotic, but it’s opening up opportunities for companies that can make sense of it all. That’s true of CityPockets, which offers a digital wallet for storing past deal offers as well as a secondary market for buying and selling discounts. (GigaOm)…
Loopt CEO: Turning the Deal Around
When Loopt introduced its new U-Deals program earlier this year, our guest columnist, Doug Stephens hailed the concept as a “profound” shift in the consumer dynamic. Street Fight recently caught up with Loopt’s founder and CEO Sam Altman to talk about U-Deals, location privacy, and where he sees location-based services headed.
Foursquare’s Merchant API Lays Groundwork for Monetization
Amid the fanfare over Foursquare’s new features, the July release and August update of the company’s Merchant API went largely unnoticed. Eric Friedman, Foursquare’s director of business development, talks about why the offering marks a big step toward improving merchant services and laying the groundwork for future monetization.
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)…
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