News and Analysis
Raise Report: Getaround, Marble, Qualtrics 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 otonomo, Virtualitics, Factom, and Reltio.
Street Fight Daily: Google Boosts Ads with Machine Learning, Gannett Acquires SweetIQ
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Leans on Machine Learning and Scale for Smarter Display Ads… Amazon’s Alexa Voice Tech is Now Available to Build Chatbots… Twitter is Testing a New Way to Show You News Articles…
Gannett Acquires SweetIQ, Building Out ReachLocal’s Suite of Digital Products
Gannett announced on Thursday afternoon that it has acquired Montreal-based listings management company SweetIQ, which will be rolled into its ReachLocal suite of software for small businesses and brands. SweetIQ’s products provide local businesses with tools to manage their listings and reputation, and measure consumer engagement.
Latest Posts
Philly.com Launches Hyperlocal Site for Main Line
Philly.com, the digital face for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News, launched a small hyperlocal site yesterday. The site, Neighbors, will begin by providing news coverage exclusively for Philadelphia’s Main Line — the city’s oldest, and arguably most advertising-friendly, suburb…
Street Fight Daily: 10.04.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
In the top 30 US markets, no company that reports purchase counts outperformed Groupon in August. In fact, in only 5 markets is the second largest competitor even generating 50% of the gross revenue Groupon generates. (Yipit Blog)…
It was only about six months ago that investor excitement for a Groupon IPO was so high that its expected valuation was $25 billion. Now, institutional investors are wary. A fund manager suggests that Groupon might have to reduce its IPO valuation to between $3 billion and $5 billion in order to get it out the door. (TechCrunch)…
Groupon Rewards Is a Positive Step, but Challenges Remain
Launching Groupon Rewards is an acknowledgement of the importance of merchants offering rewards programs. As deal networks look to move beyond deep discounting, expect competitors and new entrants to keep innovating in loyalty…
Hyperlocal Publishers Form a Trade Group
A group of 22 local online news organizations have announced that they are forming a trade association. The parameters and potential activity of the association remain largely undefined, but the group includes some of the better-known names in indie hyperlocal publishing, including The Batavian’s Howard Owens, Baristanet’s Debra Gallant, and Oakland Local’s Susan Mernit…
Street Fight Daily: 10.03.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Loopt has been allowed its first patent, and it could be a big one. In layman’s terms, the patent describes using your location to display relevant ads and offers on top of a map, as an interstitial, or as a text ad — another claim also discusses displaying where your friends are on the same map. (TechCrunch)…
A basic contradiction at the heart of the daily deals industry on the Internet has become apparent. Consumers have been told: You will never pay full price again. The merchants were hearing: You are going to get new customers who will stick around and pay full price. Disappointment was inevitable. (New York Times)…
Bing is Good for Daily Deals — And Deal Buyers
A few weeks back Microsoft’s Bing! was the first search engine to roll out a daily deals search feature. The deals feed includes 200,000 offers perusable by geography and timing. It’s impressive. The Bing! Team has been aggressive about quickly putting in place customer-centric features like enhanced travel search and visual shopping search that address the way we live now with useful tools. This is the logical extension of the daily deal aggregation game, where the big fellas in the online search biz take the lead. And it both validates and improve my deal experience…
Street Fight Daily: 09.30.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
AOL appears to be preparing us for some kind of neighborhood-based social network built around MapQuest. It has registered a bunch of domains this year that all point to a page that says something called “mqVibe” is coming soon. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Facebook Deals official last day was Sunday, but sources say the company’s withdrawal is not a bad omen for the industry. All of the companies in the space, including newbie Google, are rapidly creating mobile solutions that will recognize when people are close to a deal and allow them to redeem it immediately. (AllThingsD)…
Local Quotables: Susan Mernit, Steve Buttry, Jeffrey Kalmikoff, and more
A weekly roundup of thoughts about and around the hyperlocal industry.
Susan Mernit chastises the ONA; a Groupon manager says businesses don’t understand their product; SimpleGeo’s Jeffrey Kalmikoff expresses doubts about Facebook’s new interface; and Hearsay Local’s Clara Shih talks about social networks in the organization. More:
Digital Pioneer David Cohn: Hyperlocals Need Passion AND Revenue
David Cohn, founder of Spot.us, a nonprofit pioneer in community-funded reporting, has been hired by the UC/Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to help develop a sustainable business model for hyperlocals. He will run three Ford Foundation-funded, student-staffed hyperlocals in the Bay Area, with the aim of making them self-supporting. As he began his new assignment, […]
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