Street Fight Daily: Facebook Reportedly Circles Waze, Klout Dips Into Local Commerce
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Reports: Facebook Is Buying Social Mapping/Traffic App Waze For Up To $1B To Court Mobile Users (TechCrunch)… Klout Dips into Q&A and Local Commerce with Launch of New Questions Feature (GigaOm)… Trulia Agrees to Buy Real-Estate Software Maker Market Leader For $355 Million (Wall Street Journal)…
AOL Chief: We Will Use ‘All Means Possible’ to Get Patch to Profitability by Q4
AOL’s hyperlocal media network Patch has rolled out its redesign from a handful of pilot communities to around 100 markets across the country, Tim Armstrong, AOL’s chief executive, said during an earnings call Wednesday morning. The move comes as AOL focuses in on Patch’s model, pushing the closely-watched hyperlocal news network to reach run-rate profitability by Q4 of this year…
Street Fight Daily: Discover Pushes Paypal In-Store, Twitter Opens Self-Serve Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Discover Pushes PayPal’s In-Store Service as First Data Holds Out (Wall Street Journal)… Twitter Opens Up Self-Serve Advertising Platform to All Businesses (GigaOm)… Won’t You Be in My Nextdoor Network? (AllThingsD)…
Street Fight Daily: Pinterest Buys Livestar, Starbucks’ Shoddy Square Rollout
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Pinterest Acquires Local Recommendation App Livestar (AllThingsD)… Starbuck’s Shoddy Square Rollout Baffles Baristas, Confuses Customers (Fast Company)… Yelp: Study Says Our SMB Advertisers Make $23K More per Year (Screenwerk)…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s New Feed, Plum District Founder Out
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Don’t Laugh at Zuckerberg’s Newspaper Metaphor, It’s More Accurate Than You Think (PadnoDaily)… CEO And Founder Megan Gardner Out At Mom-Centric Deals Site Plum District, Ex-Googler Susan Kim Takes Over (TechCrunch)… AOL’s CEO to Haters: Our Content Strategy Was Right After All (and Patch is Fine Too) (Paid Content)…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon to Stick with Model, Retailigence Nabs $6.3M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Groupon CFO: No Changes to Business Model (Wall Street Journal)… Local Search Update for Google Maps iOS Could Hurt Yelp (Venture Beat)… Retailigence Bags $6.3M for Online-to-Offline Marketing (Vator News)…
Openings & New Hires at Retailigence, Square, Patch, PayPal and more…
PubMatic keeps up a hiring spree; the Keith Rabois is-he-or-isn’t-he saga is over, but he’s not the only Square loss; Retailigence has a LOT of jobs on offer; and things are a-changing’ at YP. Plus, former Martha Stewart Omnimedia doyenne Susan Lyne leaves her post in hyperlocal before she even really got started And if you’re working in sales, you won’t want to skip this lineup of listings…
Just Another Chat With a Frustrated Patch Editor
“We have had two conference calls in a row the last two weeks with the people at HQ excitedly talking about big ideas that are going to get us to profitability, but the ideas sound like bad ones, not to mention ones that they have already tried,” said this editor, a mix of frustration and exasperation in his voice. “They are getting farther away from the hyperlocal vision and really pushing generic SEO content to try and get unique visitors…”
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Expands Deals, Visa Teams with Samsung
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Foursquare Opens Up Check-In Deals to More Kinds of Plastic (AllThingsD)… Visa Teams Up With Samsung on Mobile Payments (New York Times)… With ClubLocal and New SaaS Tools, ReachLocal Wants to be the Amazon of Local services (PandoDaily)…
Street Fight Daily: Stoppelman Makes a Buck, Local’s Top Ten
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Yelp CEO Takes $1 Salary (CNET)… The World’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Local (TechCrunch)… Why Daily Deals Aren’t All Bad (No, Really) (PandoDaily)…
Patch Misses 2012 Revenue Target
AOL’s network of hyperlocal sites missed the $40 million to $50 million revenue target that the company had set for last year, a miss that CEO Tim Armstrong attributed to disruption from superstorm Sandy in the fourth quarter during a Friday earnings call. The company remains committed to achieving run-rate profitability for Patch by the end of this year…
Street FIght Daily: Shopkick Hits Profitability, Groupon Expands Reporting
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Shopkick Says It’s Now Profitable, With Its Shopping App Adding $200M In Sales For Target, Best Buy And Others In 2012 (TechCrunch)… Groupon Unveils Merchant Impact Report, a Free Service So Merchants Can Justify Their Deal Performance (The Next Web)… AOL’s Patch to Go From Lousy Local News Network to Even Worse Community Message Board network (PandoDaily)…
Patch: Here’s Ten Things We’re Doing RIGHT
Anyone paying attention to this column knows I’ve dedicated plenty of thought to AOL’s efforts in local, primarily via its Patch effort. Some at Patch/AOL were unhappy. Others mailed me with even more colorful complaints, or “can-you-believe-this” vignettes. So I wanted to turn the tables on myself a bit and challenge Patch to sell us on what is going right…