Case Study: Pizza Chain Finds New Ways to Build Email Database
As the director of marketing at Stone Hearth Pizza in Boston, Alex Chamberlain is always on the lookout for ways to grow her email database. She’s found that the best way to acquire new email addresses is by requiring customers to input their contact information when redeeming limited-time deals and promotions…
Why TechStars’ Tisch Won’t Buy Your ‘Daily Deal’ Company
Investment interest in daily deal companies has been flat for some time, but the stigma attached to the “daily deal” has turned the classification into a scarlet letter for companies. Some of the negativity around the term is likely a consequence of the irregularities found in Groupon’s accounting. But the underlying shift stems from a simpler strategic shift in industry organization…
Street Fight Daily: 11.03.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
AOL’s Armstrong Talks Patch Strategy in Q3 Earnings Call (PaidContent)
“When you talk to major auto makers, half goes into local and regional,” Armstrong said, saying that AOL will also be aiming more heavily at local retailers as the company works to make Patch profitable. Armstrong didn’t provide any clearer sense, however, when Patch would be evenly profitable, as opposed to the expectation that some parts of the network will do more than break even by the end of the year…
Groupon’s IPO Is Coming — But How Much Is It Really Worth? (GigaOm)
Colleen Taylor: It’s been a long and winding road, but Groupon is set to hold its initial public offering on the stock market any day now, with several reports saying the IPO will take place by week’s end. It will be interesting to see just how high Groupon goes once it actually hits the public market…
Street Fight Daily: 10.31.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Gilt City Picks Up BuyWithMe at a Discount (AllThingsD)
The daily deals site operated by fashion and luxury online retailer Gilt Groupe, has acquired daily deals company BuyWithMe. Gilt will be purchasing BuyWithMe’s assets, including its member and vendor lists, as well as some of its technology…
Cachet, Not Cash Fuels NYT’s Local Team-Ups (NetNewsCheck)
The New York Times’ local partnerships with the Bay Citizen, the Texas Tribune and the Chicago News Cooperative have been a boon to the legitimacy nonprofit sites and their missions to raise the level of local journalism in their markets. But some acknowledge that weighing the Times’ needs against their own can be a challenge…
Street Fight Daily: 10.26.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Hyperlocal news sites regard Groupon and other daily deal services with a mixture of love (for flooding their coffers with ad dollars) and dread (for competing with their own deal offerings). Merchants ought to feel the same way, said Gary Cowan, senior vice president of product and marketing for Datasphere. (Forbes)… Foursquare is poised to relaunch Add to Foursquare under the new name Save to Foursquare in the next month. (GigaOm)…
Street Fight Daily: 10.20.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Groupon is seeking to sell shares in an offering that would value the company at close to $12 billion. The valuation is a steep comedown from earlier expectations that an I.P.O. of the Internet darling could value the company as much as $25 billion to $30 billion. (New York Times/Dealbook)…
Ownlocal has announcing a new round of investment from a string of investors including the Knight Enterprise Fund, Automattic, the makers of WordPress, and a number of prominent angels. The company creates web services for small businesses through partnerships with local media outlets and other organizations. (GigaOm)…
TownHog Deal Speaks Volumes About VC-Backed Deal Startups
BuyWithMe has been looking to scale to catch up with Groupon and LivingSocial, and this is its sixth acquisition this year. TownHog, which has a strong footprint in the Bay Area, where it was started, is a nice feather in their cap.
But TownHog was backed by some serious hitters. As TechCrunch noted, “The company…was backed by a host of star investors (Jawed Karim of YouTube fame and Kevin Hartz of Xoom / Eventbrite to name but a few)…”
Street Fight Daily: 09.12.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
A Groupon deal might boost sales but, it can also lower a merchant’s reputation as measured by Yelp ratings, say computer scientists who have analyzed the link between daily deals and online reviews. (Technology Review)…
Patch is looking for adolescent contributors from high schools — and even middle schools — as it seeks to recruit thousands of community bloggers. (Forbes)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.23.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Facebook is killing off Places. To be clear, Facebook is not ducking out of the location game itself. In fact, you could say that they’re doubling-down on it. But they are moving away from the game that the “check-in” services have been playing. (TechCrunch)…
Group Commerce, which sells a software platform to let publishers host their own daily deal applications, has acquired geo-location startup Socialight. The Socialight team and technology will be put toward fleshing out Group Commerce’s mobile strategy. (GigaOm)…
Street Fight Daily: 07.27.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Groupon has filed for a $10,288,416 offering of equity in connection with its acquisition of Chilean startup Zappedy. However we don’t know if there was cash involved in addition to equity in the Zappedy acquisition so it’s not clear what the final price of the transaction was. (TechCrunch)…
BuyWithMe has announced the launch of their new Android application, which provides merchants with the ability to reach out to mobile consumers with location-based offers. (Daily Deal Media)…
Lesson From Gilt: Consolidation Means Growing Up for Daily Deals
Gilt City’s retreat points to a larger systemic issue for the deals space in 2012. With venture investment in the space waning, access to the type of funding necessary to scale the capital-intensive sales efforts is becoming much more difficult — and the potential for a relative newcomer to achieve Groupon or LivingSocial-like growth seems a lot less likely…