Waze Highlights Inconsistencies in Local Data
There are too many different ways to categorize businesses, and none of them represents a unified standard for online search. Such a standard if widely implemented would make all businesses categorized as grocery stores line up neatly with each other and would provide a significant boost in overall relevancy…
Street Fight Daily: Local Online Ad Rev to Jump 30%, Facebook Reviews
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Borrell: Newspaper Revenue to Rise in 2013 (GigaOm)… Watch Out, Yelp: Facebook Is Thinking About Restaurant Reviews
(Business Insider)… Square, Starbucks roll out service (USA Today)…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Sees Talent Drain, Analyst Slams Zillow
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… As Groupon Struggles, Some of Its Brighter Talent is Walking Out Door (Chicago Sun-Times)… Shares of Zillow Sink After Analyst Says Prospects Stink (GeekWire)… Apple v. Google Will Define the Fourth Wave of Online Mapping (Venture Beat)…
Apple Maps: Taking the Long View
There’s no dancing around the fact that the much-anticipated launch of Apple Maps has turned into a fiasco for the company. Yet there’s little doubt Apple will buff out this particular blemish with time. The interesting part will be seeing exactly how the company chooses to address the gap in expertise that led to the current sub-par product. A big acquisition of talent or technology seems likely…
iOS6: Can Google Beat Apple in its Own Backyard?
Mapping is a game ultimately won on function rather than form. This requires lots of listings data and search algorithms; in other words, things that are non-core to Apple. Relative to Google’s tenure in this area, Apple is only starting to stitch together local vertical content partners like Yelp and TomTom. And it’s already starting to show…
Street Fight Daily: Village Voice Sold, Groupon Cuts Loom
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Village Voice Media Execs Acquire The Company’s Famed Alt Weeklies, Form New Holding Company (TechCrunch)… As Groupon’s New Operations Czar Seeks to Streamline, Job Cuts Loom (Crain’s Chicago Business)… Local Search Cage Match: Google Vs. Apple Maps (And Siri) (Search Engine Land)…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Pays Up, Yelp Shines in Apple Maps
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Groupon Promising Merchants “Lowest Cost” Payments Service (And It’s Using an iPhone) (All Things D)… You May Hate Apple Maps, But the Yelp Integration is Something to Love (Venture Beat)… How Better Location Data Could Mean More-targeted Mobile Ads (GigaOm)…
Street Fight Daily: Edo Raises $15M, Local Retail Spend Up in 2013
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Card-Linked Local Offers Platform Edo Raises $15M Series C (TechCrunch)… Local Web Retail Ad Spend to Hit $4.2B in ’13 (Net News Check)… Locaid Bolsters Location Service With IP Address Data (GigaOm)…
With Passbook, iPhone 5 Answers Mobile’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’
More data on a faster device means new opportunities for data-heavy hyperlocal developers, which should open up some new innovations by developers. And while the omission of near-field communications may dash the hopes of some who looked for Apple to push into payments, it does not diminish the potential impact of iOS6, the operating system announced in June, and its key feature — Passbook…
iPhone 5: What Passbook and Maps Could Mean for Hyperlocal
Apple is set to announce the iPhone 5 during a press event in San Francisco later today, and with it, a set of features that could deeply impact the hyperlocal ecosystem. Maps and Passbook have the potential to become core, high-growth platforms within the hyperlocal industry, and the deeper integration of Siri could move the needle in local search…
Street Fight Daily: Mason Opens Up, Apple’s New Location Patent
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Andrew Mason Talks About Groupon’s Growth and Growing Up (Chigao Tribune)… Apple Patent Would Disable Smartphones by Location (Mashable)… Locu opens its local business data trove to devs with API (GigaOm)…
Poll: Bad Experiences More Likely to Inspire Reviews
A poll of 1,000 U.S. respondents found that 19.1 percent of respondents are more likely to write a review after a poor experience, and 16.8 percent after a pleasant one. Another 42.5 percent said they’re equally likely to write a review regardless of the experience, and 21.6 percent said they’re not likely to write a review at all. The poll was conducted on behalf of Street Fight by third-party opinions site Toluna…
Street Fight Daily: Starbucks Meet Square, Craigslist Holes Up
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Starbucks and Square to Team Up (NYT)… Craigslist Cuts Off Its Search Engine to Spite Its Face (GigaOm)… Why Apple Should Buy Foursquare (TechCrunch)…
The Long Tail of Local Search
Far from invisible tools that merely get you to the store or service you want, local search products actually tell a story about the needs local search companies think they are trying to fulfill, demonstrating in some cases a stark contrast between the actual habits of the local consumer and the assumptions of local apps and websites…
Does the ‘Arms Race’ Over Mapping Tech Benefit the Local Consumer?
As the consumer’s relationship with local information has shifted from search to discovery, so has their relationship with maps. The question for Google and Apple is whether 3D mapping is an innovation built to sustain, or disrupt, the search-based local web that Google envisioned when it launched Maps in 2005…
How Siri Works and Why It Matters for Local
It’s pretty clear that Siri’s interpreter can examine a spoken query for syntax and keywords in order to trigger what it thinks is the most relevant web service. Often when Siri gets it wrong, this is because it has made a mistake about which service to call. In my experience, Siri is somewhat over-eager to assume you want local businesses when you say a word that sounds like a product or service category…