News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Looms Over Snap IPO, Inside a Local Publisher’s Rise
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… A Rival’s Shadow Looms Over Snapchat IPO… How Local Publisher Technically Media Is Diversifying Its Business with a Community Focus… Marketo CEO on the Company’s Big Plans to Take On Big Marketing Clouds…
Street Culture: How Some of the Most Successful Startup Leaders Motivate Their Teams
New tech startups might not have a formula to create culture, but many leaders consider culture an important component for success. Though every company is different, some trends emerge: leaders must be transparent, they must hire for fit, and they must give employees a way to feel that they partially own the company.
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Street Fight Daily: 05.31.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… Groupon is either creating a new approach to commerce that will change the way we eat and shop and interact with the physical world, or it is a sure sign that Internet mania is once again skidding out of control. Or both. (New York Times)… Amazon is entering the daily deal space with myhabit.com, a members only daily deal site focusing on designer clothing. (Daily Deal Media)…
Relocations: 05.27.11
Comings and goings in hyperlocal.
Yatown, a hyperlocal social network, has named Yahoo Search senior vice president Tuoc Luong to its board. … Hyperlocal marketing agency Geomentum had some moves this week: Todd Curry becomes chief digital officer. He was previously founder and managing director of trading desk Accuen Media. Lisa Bradner has been upped to chief client services and growth officer from president. (Bradner spoke recently with Street Fight about the need for scale.) … Former San Diego Union-Tribune executive Matt Chaney has joined Second Street, a provider of white-label daily deals platforms for local companies, as director of affiliate deals success. … In a return to an old position, Michael Sawtell became COO of Local.com, a position he held there from 2000 to 2005, after the departure of Bruce Crair.
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Groupon and Foursquare: A Happy Combo
The single-best deal, assertion, investment or other strategy this week.
Who: Groupon and Foursquare
Why: For considering a partnership that ties check-ins to daily deals
Daily deals leader Groupon and social location innovator Foursquare are in partnership talks, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The arrangement is likely to see Groupon deals targeted to Foursquare users’ check-ins. Mobile app users who tell their friends that they’re in the vicinity of a venue offering a discount are obviously prime customers...
Street Fight Daily: 05.27.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… Google yesterday introduced Google Offers, its new daily deals service. Aimed at local small businesses, the service will launch in Portland, Ore., then spread outwards to other cities. (The Next Web)… Online ad spending surged in Q1, rising 23 percent over last year’s figure, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. At the moment, every major media company is trying to figure out how to better tap local online advertising dollars, especially with the explosion of local deals that have brought in smaller merchants. (Paid Content)…
Can Yelp Save Itself from Its Users?
A friend at work is a serious cheap eats hound. He has eaten at more ethnic restaurants in the South Bay than I even knew existed. I asked where he was going for lunch yesterday. He told me. I Yelped it, and he laughed at me. Why? “All those reviews are useless to someone like me. I have different taste than people who use Yelp. And I’m sure that a ton of those reviews are gamed,” he said…
WSB’s Tracy Record: You Can’t Do Hyperlocal on a Template
When West Seattle Blog launched, the site didn’t carry any ads — not even Google Adsense ads which co-founder Tracy Record thought were “ugly and cluttery.” At the time, the site was more of a passion project than a business. But when they finally got advertising two years later, Record says it didn’t take very long before she and her partner were turning a profit: “It was rather rapid in terms of people embracing us and we were in the black in the first year.” …
Street Fight Daily: 05.26.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… Facebook’s local chief Emily White says that local businesses should post to their wall three times per week. She also talks about the network’s push for check-in deals on Facebook Places. (USA Today)… Google is keenly interested in location data, and it seems like its work in maps and location is paying off, particularly on mobile phones. Google Maps on mobile devices, which makes up about 40 percent of all Google Maps usage, is on pace to eclipse desktop usage for the first time next month. (GigaOm)…
Case Study: Restaurant Chain Builds Loyalty With Check-In Discounts
Scott Wise is the president and CEO of A Pots & Pans Production, a management company that runs seven restaurants in Indiana. He says businesses need to approach online media like they would a cocktail party, and that it’s better to take notes and learn from what other people are saying than to “go in screaming, drinking, and trying to enter everyone’s conversation.”
Hyperlocal Launch at TechCrunch Disrupt: Meporter
Among the 29 startups to launch their products at TechCrunch Disrupt this week in New York was Meporter, an iPhone app that offers citizen journalists another platform to publish and tag news by location. What makes it different and perhaps more promising is the the ability of event organizers and news organizations to create news events to which citizens on location can check-in and report details. Meporter is calling itself a local mobile newsdesk, turning witnesses at the scene into reporters by allowing them to “pinpoint news as it’s happening in a local community, down to the street level…
AirRun’s ‘Runners’ Perform Your Tasks
The field of radius-based, phone-centric, hyperlocal services is getting more crowded. I won’t venture to list all the players for fear of leaving some out — “pop,” there’s another one. A few, however, are drawing particular attention in the race to gain enough scale and nomadic-market penetration to deliver on the promise that when a user wants something, someone will be there to deliver it…
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