News and Analysis

Voice Bots Have One Big Problem: Human Behavior

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We’re surely moving in the direction of voice input to bots, but unless microphones advance — allowing you to request things with a near-silent whisper (or perhaps with thoughts) — people will continue to let their fingers do the talking.

How Local News Publishers Can Make Revenue and Engagement a Single and Successful Strategy

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Too often, local news publishers are given an either-or — either focus on growing revenue or on making deeper connections with users. Relay Media’s head of product Barb Palser believes publishers can do both at the same time.

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Recommends Local Businesses, Google Maps Supercharges Location Sharing

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Tests an Enhanced Local Search and Discovery Feature Offering Business Suggestions… Google Maps Supercharges Location Sharing, Begins Drooling Over Your Data… AT&T, Verizon Pull Ads from Google Over ‘Hate’ Videos…

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FundsOn: Deals Site’s Charitable Twist – Getting by Giving Back

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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

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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

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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)…

Case Study: Using Daily Deals to Target College Students

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What’s the best way to draw college students off campus and into nearby coffee shops and stores? Andrew Eigel, owner of gaming cafe Roxx Electrocafe, believes the answer is a combination of daily deal coupons, humorous sandwich boards, and well-placed QR codes that customers can use to redeem free drinks and other specials. The Cincinnati entrepreneur pitted Groupon against LivingSocial to see which one worked better. As it turned out, he needed them both.

Street Fight Daily: 09.05.11

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

GPS navigation services provider TeleNav has completed the acquisition of goby, a local search engine and mobile application developer. goby provides services that allows users to explore events and activities based on location. (M&A Deals)…

Nonprofit news site The Bay Citizen got a jump start to success early in its life with a unique content relationship with The New York Times that provides two pages of local news for the newspaper’s Northern California edition. (NetNewsCheck)…

Why Realtors Are Becoming Hyperlocal Content Producers

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Hyperlocal blogging has become a key part of the real estate agent’s marketing arsenal. Real estate network Active Rain boasts over 200,000 blogger signups, and created a separate arena called Localism devoted to community blogging…

WaPo’s Suburban Newsrooms: Let the Walls Come Tumbling Down

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The shuttering of the Washington Post’s suburban newsrooms shouldn’t be a sad moment at all. It should be an occasion for the Post to let to its staff and the world know that not only is it not retrenching but it is expanding its commitment to the greater Washington community…

Rethinking Hyperlocal: Not Just a Paper, Not an Address

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The Washington Post’s decision to close most of its regional bureaus makes a tremendous amount of sense and moves us further along the continuum towards a new reality when the news doesn’t have an office and hyperlocal is also hypermobile. In fact, I’d venture to say that real estate is something that the traditional dailies should ditch, pronto, as part of their transition into a new kind of news organization…

Facebook’s Life After Deals

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The best or biggest deal, assertion, investment or other strategy this week. Who: Facebook What: Taking another approach to location-based services Just a week after it said it would abandon its location-based service Places in favor of a new strategy, Facebook announced that it was getting out of the deals business. Facebook Deals was only around […]

Street Fight Daily: 09.02.11

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

While Yelp’s daily deal segment got off to a strong start, things have been getting worse ever since. So, what happened? Over the last 6 months, Yelp has been generating less and less revenue per deal as competition in the space heated up. (Yipit Blog)…

The Washington Post has decided to let the leases lapse on all but two of its local bureaus. Beginning next year, the Post has decided to end the leases on four offices in Virginia and three offices in Maryland. (Politico)…