News and Analysis

Location Data Shows Which Brands Coachella Attendees Favor

Attendees at the annual music festival may seem somewhat heterogeneous from the outside, but a new study of InMarket’s anonymized location data gives a sense of the concertgoers’ brand preferences, and insight into the effectiveness of sponsors’ campaigns.

Street Fight Daily: Instagram Growing Rapidly, Gannett Earnings Suggest Bleak Outlook for Newspapers

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Gannett Earnings Forecast a Bleak 2017 for Newspaper Companies… Instagram is Growing Faster Than Ever and Now Has 700 Million Users… Waymo Is Hitting Uber Where It Hurts…

Macaroni Kid Pushes Stroller Into Big and Site-Packed Local Parent Space

One of the earliest hyperlocal networks for parents is Macaroni Kid, which was founded by “recovering lawyer” Joyce Shulman and her husband, marketing entrepreneur Eric Cohen, in their community on Long Island in 2009. In this Q&A, Cohen talks about the company’s recent acquisition of also-well-established Stroller Traffic.

Latest Posts

HopStop Launches Self-Serve Local Ad Play

Hopstop, the navigation service that pioneered point-to-point transit directions six years ago, has launched an advertising product aimed at local marketers. The self-serve platform allows local merchants to target HopStop users who search for directions to or from their neighborhood with a short call-to-action ad…

Jim Brady Reflects on WaPo, ‘Blown Up’ TBD and the Do or Die Future of Local

Combine digital community journalism and the New York Jets? Jim Brady might call that heaven. The longtime leader in online journalism and hyperlocal endeavors (though he avoids the term hyperlocal) seems to expend as much Twitter juice on the finer points of the team’s play as he does on crowdsourcing the news. But just barely. Fact is Brady is one of the most recognized editorial leaders in online news going back to washingtonpost.com (the first time … ya know, in the ’90s) then AOL, then Washington Post 2.0, next TBD and now the Journal Register Company. Before he gets picked up by the Jets as a mid-season PR QB, I thought it a good time to catch up…

Street Fight Daily: 10.19.11

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

Daily deals are coming to the radio. Clear Channel, the media giant that owns 850 stations, has made an exclusive deal with LivingSocial to offer its discount offerings on 500 of its stations, the companies announced on Tuesday. (New York Times/Media Decoder)…

Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley expects the company to remain independent for another year, but admits he’s open to an acquisition: “The only thing we want to do is build a product,” Crowley said. “If we do it independently that’s great, if we do it as part of a company that’s another story.” (Business Insider)…

SMBs Put Mobile Marketing on the Front Burner

Just nine months ago, the overwhelming majority of small business (SMB) owners didn’t consider mobile an important marketing channel. But as SMBs and their customers have adopted smartphones in increasing numbers, merchant interest in mobile marketing has grown — very rapidly.

Case Study: Neiman Marcus’ LBS Success in a High-End Bag Hunt

A recent Foursquare event “tracked a tremendous lift in media coverage and positive commentary” for Neiman Marcus, according to Jean Scheidnes, who manages social media for the retailer. Here she talks about how the campaign worked and why it was so successful…

Street Fight Daily: 10.18.11

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

New York state tax administrators have concluded merchants should collect sales tax on the full face value of items purchased with vouchers from Groupon, LivingSocial and other Internet discount deal sites —if the vouchers are for a specific dollar amount. (Forbes)…

New York City’s Gothamist is thriving with an average 2 million unique visitors each month reading its eclectic brand of voice-forward reporting and aggregation geared to the young and well-heeled. Its success has allowed it to spin off sister sites across the country and around the globe. (NetNewsCheck)…

Don’t Miss Next Week’s Street Fight Summit – Ticket Giveaway

Hundreds of top executives from hyperlocal, location-based and daily deals companies will come together next week in New York City for Street Fight Summit 2011, where they’ll discuss the latest ideas and insights about how digital companies can target the $150 billion local advertising market. Street Fight is giving away a free ticket today to the first person who writes us.

Selected Directory of Hyperlocal Publications in NYC

 PUBLICATION CATEGORY M.O. Bay Ridge Journal Neighborhood. Heavy on press releases and second-hand crime stories. Bensonhurst Bean Neighborhood. Recently created by Ned Berke, founder/editor/publisher of SheepsheadBites, site relies heavily on Huffington Post-style re-purposing of content originated by other publications. Bikeblog Specialty site. Founder Michael Green, a film maker who sees the bike as “humankind’s greatest […]

BiteHunter CEO: Learning From Kayak

BiteHunter launched amid the height of deal mania this Spring, as an aggregator for dining deals. With the June launch of its iPhone application and subsequent addition of instant deals to the mobile product last week, the company has grown into a real-time search engine for dining deals. Street Fight recently spoke with the company’s CEO, Gil Harel, a veteran in the dining vertical, about the aggregation industry and the variable future of the deals space…

#SFS11 Company Profile: JiWire

Calling itself a “mobile audience media” company, JiWire connects advertisers with laptop, tablet and smartphone users taking advantage of public wifi connections. The company sells off of a comprehensive list of free and fee-based wifi connections across the country. Users who connect to those wifi hotspots see relevant location-based ads from JiWire partners…