Empowering Local Restaurants Online
In 2011, pretty much every restauranteur knows that their business needs some sort of Web presence. They may just need a functional way to let people know their address and menu, or they may want a more sophisticated marketing outreach, but online is certainly part of the equation. The problem is that most restaurateurs aren’t versed in Web design, and many don’t know exactly what they should be doing online and why…
Street Fight Daily: 05.10.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Foursquare and Google are joining forces to enable a trial of Foursquare checkins via near field communication (NFC). The test starts Tuesday at Google I/O, the annual developer conference in San Francisco. (Mashable)…
LocalResponse takes the location data from other services and combines it with implicit location information, gathered from status updates, to create a marketing platform that lets companies target consumers wherever they are in real time. (GigaOm)…
Atlanta Chef Reaches Diners on as Many Platforms as Possible
When he’s not in the kitchen at one of Atlanta’s top steakhouses, McKendrick’s Steakhouse executive chef Thomas Minchella is busy managing his restaurant’s Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare accounts, along with his personal social media accounts and a company blog. He aims to keep his messages authentic and can’t stand it when celebrity chefs hire outside companies to do their tweeting for them…
Webster Says Patch Must ‘Be the Community,’ Others Weigh In
This is a the third installment in a series about hyperlocal past and present. Read here about Digital City / AOL, CitySearch, and Microsoft’s Sidewalk…
I reached out to Warren Webster, President of AOL’s Patch network, the day before their big multi-thousand-blogger launch for thoughts on some of the views of the “Local 1.0” set discussed in the previous posts in this series. In an email he said: “It’s important to note that Patch isn’t citizen journalism. Patch is a platform staffed by professional journalists with an average of nine years experience. Patch also offers many opportunities for members of the community to have a voice on this platform — and for SMBs to drive consumer actions.”..
Street Fight Daily: 05.09.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Groupon is preparing to launch Groupon Now, a mobile app that will connect customers with real-time coupons for retailers in their vicinity. Tap the app’s “I’m hungry” button, and you might be offered a discount on a slice at a pizza parlor a few blocks away. But you’ll have to move fast: The deals will be time-sensitive and good for just a few hours. (CNN/Money)…
Lauren Fisher writes that “2011 could be the year that the check-in arrives, albeit differently to how we thought it might look.” (The Next Web)…
How a ‘Geo-Contextual’ Ad Campaign Produces Results
Hyperlocal has become one of the most intriguing new ideas for retailers and national brands looking to reach specific markets. Some people ask what the difference is between “local” and “hyperlocal” from a media perspective. I think the difference is clear. Traditionally, “local” media has meant DMA or metro level content such as major metro newspaper Web sites. But they could cover a pretty vast geography. Conversely, “hyperlocal” means granular, community-based or zip-code-level content…
Put a Geofence Around Your Lunch
So for me, lunch at work has generally been one of three things – eating by myself and reading, eating with co-workers, or meeting up with friends. While often a brief interlude of joviality or solitude, lunch has rarely been functional. Being an efficiency oriented guy (far too much, according to my wife), I decided to try a new service I had read about on TechCrunch called Let’s Lunch. Basically, this is a derivative of the old “It’s Just Lunch” couple matching service favored by urban office dwellers who prefer to see their date in broad daylight before a undertaking a nocturnal mission. Rather, Let’s Lunch is focused on bringing people together to meet for networking purposes…
Street Fight Daily: 05.06.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
AOL’s Tim Armstrong just keeps piling his chips higher and higher on his Patch bet, but the odds of winning continue to be extremely slim, writes Matthew Ingram. (GigaOm)…
Google’s Marissa Mayer — who took charge of Google’s Location Services division in October — yesterday described Business Photos, a new product that will take Google Maps indoors. She also spoke with Jason Kincaid about the problems facing Google Latitude, and how Google Places is going to differentiate itself from Yelp in the future. (Paid Content, TechCrunch)…
Hyperlocal 1.0: Matt Kursh Remembers Microsoft’s Sidewalk
A serious contender and moneyed innovator, Microsoft Sidewalk took to the local Web the way the behemoth did most things: with lots of muscle. It quickly squared off with CitySearch over advertising share and rapidly expanded its editorial footprint across the nation – carrying itself with arguably the most style among the hyperlocal contenders.
The Merging of Location and Daily Deals = Possible Success
The single-best deal, assertion, investment or other strategy of the week...
Who: Beyond and Social-Loco…
Why: For digging into the data behind check-ins.
There is an opportunity for big brands to engage consumers in location-based apps by tapping into and combing multiple motivations (discounts, learning, promoting, meeting friends). To reach beyond the early adopters, brands should focus their strategies around Facebook and Groupon as the two platforms that will most likely drive adoption. —David Hargreaves, CEO, Beyond
…
Salon Owner Courts a Niche Market of Eco-Friendly Customers
Aurora Marks isn’t a fan of mass-market coupon sites. As the co-owner of Salon Botanique Eco-Chic, an organic hair salon and spa in Morristown, New Jersey, she says she focuses on reaching customers who care more about getting the best quality hair and skin products than about getting a bargain basement price.
Ex-CitySearch Chief Conn on Hyperlocal 1.0
This is a the second installment in a series about hyperlocal past and present… An early entrant to the hyperlocal game was the fast-moving (and still going) CitySearch. They focused on data-driven content about entertainment and “things to do,” further crafted by editors in cities around the country. CitySearch went head-to-head with Digital City but saw real competition in Microsoft’s Sidewalk, which they eventually bought. Former CitySearch chief Charles Conn looks back and tells us a little bit about the way it was…
Street Fight Daily: 05.05.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Those who use social location-based apps such as Foursquare or Facebook Places represent just 17% of the mobile population, according to a new study. Of those opting out of participating in the checkin craze, or any other social location behavior for that matter, 48% cited privacy concerns as their primary reason for not doing so. (Mashable)…
During AOL’s earnings call, one of the top questions from analysts was what is AOL’s plan with Patch? The company dumped $40 million into the hyperlocal network for the second quarter in a row, and it didn’t generate much revenue. Here’s Tim Armstrong’s explanation. (Business Insider)…
IAC-owned local media and advertising property CityGrid Media is acquiring social media monitoring and sentiment analysis platform BuzzLabs. The company allows publishers to leverage social content, keeps consumers better informed, and helps local businesses monitor their presence across the web. (TechCrunch)…
Hyperlocal 1.0 Heavy Bob Smith: ‘The Way It Was’
It’s difficult to pinpoint when online hyperlocal came into being. The idea was there with BBSs (electronic bulletin board services) since the early 1980s or even earlier, when local dial-up services allowed callers to access files, games, chat and so on. Long distance charges caused many to dial in to local boards. And thus local communities developed, with some system operators focusing on delivering local information and news. A few local newspapers tried getting into the game with bulletin boards of their own, or via Usenet Newsgroups…
Read the first in a series of interviews with leaders of what we’re calling Hyperlocal 1.0, as well as a bit of a response from a Hyperlocal 2.0 chief.
Street Fight Daily: 05.04.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… E-commerce giant eBay said in February that it is eying deals that more closely link the online and brick-and-mortar shopping experience. Hyperlocal has become a common phrase for the company as it targets firms that can connect shoppers to local merchants. (The Street)…
AOL HuffPo is launching three new Patch sites geared towards Latino readership in Southern California by the end of the year. No decisions have apparently been made yet regarding which communities those sites will cover. (FishbowlLA)…
“People love getting advertising that is applicable to them, and 90% of every dollar is spent offline within 10 miles of the home,” says Topix CEO Chris Tolles. “Great hyperlocal advertising works to connect consumers to applicable business where they live.” (The Next Web)…
Street Fight Daily: 05.03.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Add another big player to the list of Groupon competitors: AT&T. The telecom giant Monday began pre-registration to consumers in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth for a service via the company’s yp.com that will send daily deals to consumers. (Mashable)…
New York magazine is about to launch a weekly “deals” e-newsletter and online adjunct, but instead of matching offers play to advertisers, it will aggregate “the best of the best” of other e-commerce sites’ picks. (PaidContent)…
“Location is a serious battleground, and whoever has the best handle on it, both gathering it and using it, is best positioned to reap a lot of money as we build a lot of services based on location,” writes Ryan Kim. (GigaOm)…
CityGrid’s Herratti: Local Is Becoming More and More Fragmented
Jay Herratti has been working in the local advertising space for decades. Previously the CEO of IAC-owned destination guide CitySearch, he currently serves as CEO of CityGrid Media, a “location-aware” advertising network that aggregates local advertisers and extends them across a network of 300+ publishers, including Urban Spoon, Insider Pages, and many others. Street Fight caught up with Herratti recently to talk about the fragmented nature of the local online advertising marketplace and why the Groupon phenomenon is an example of the kind of “closed-loop” advertising model that small businesses love.
HuffPo Harnesses Patch Hyperlocals for Bin Laden News
In the months since AOL bought The Huffington Post, the company’s execs have talked a number of times about plans to incorporate coverage from Patch’s network of hyperlocal sites into HuffPo’s national report. Arianna Huffington herself recently said she expects Patch will be a key element of HuffPo’s coverage of the 2012 presidential election, and Patch local reports from California were recently used in stories about the Japanese tsunami. But last night we really saw that collaboration in action, as HuffPo drew on Patch’s network to flesh out out its coverage with hyperlocal reactions to the death of Osama bin Laden…
What’s the Right Ratio of Editors to Contributors in Hyperlocal?
What is the right ratio for the number of editors required to manage a number of contributors? And as the economics of content change and hyperlocal publishers try new models, should that ratio change? Must it change?