Street Fight Daily: 06.14.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… Groupon and LivingSocial are often mentioned in the same sentence as the two biggest players in the booming daily deals space. But new data underscores some of the differences in how they approach the market and how people use their services. Groupon and LivingSocial are “Gorillas among ants,” says comScore. (MediaPost, Business Insider)… On Monday, American Express and AOL’s Patch announced that they have teamed up to roll out Patch Deals, a new hyperlocal daily deals service powered by American Express. The company’s established hyper-local audience may give it a boost, but it’s going to need more than that to compete in the deals space, writes Faith Merino. (VatorNews)…

Street Fight Daily: 06.13.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… Groupon’s Andrew Mason has been visiting Beijing, and is now responding to a few very obvious problems at Groupon China that seasoned observers have been noting since the group buy Web site first opened up shop in Beijing and Shanghai. (TechCrunch)… One current Patch editor, who says she was “hired as part of the 2010 end of year push to launch 750 sites,” sent a note she titled “5 Things to hate about working for Patch” — one of which is “The Patch model isn’t sustainable. (Business Insider)…

Street Fight Daily: 06.10.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.The FCC has produced a 478-page report on the state of the media in the digital age, and — no surprise — the report has found a big gap in watchdog and investigative journalism, and the local news hole hasn’t been filled by the proliferation of online news and non-profits. At the same time, the report doesn’t support any major government intiative to correct the situation. (Paid Content, Block-By Block, Nieman Lab, Romenesko/Patch)… Increasingly, location is getting baked into regular web pages as well. Fwix is taking its hyperlocal places database and exposing it to web sites in a novel way. “Our goal is to index the Web by location,” says Fwix CEO Darian Shirazi. (TechCrunch)…

Street Fight Daily: 06.08.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… Foursquare has teamed with 7-11 to offer a trip to suborbital space as a prize in an online contest. While the US spaceflight program is getting its budget shut down, there’s something rather poetic about this opportunity. (ReadWriteWeb)…

A study of U.K. salon owners found that only 1% of Groupon buyers go on to become regular customers. Moreover, Groupon’s churn rate could be as high as 90%. (Dylan Collins)…

Street Fight Daily: 06.07.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… Groupon is joining two marketing-services and analytics firms to get deeper into the traditional grocery coupon business with a test today. In a first for Groupon, today’s deal in Massachusetts uses supermarket loyalty cards to conduct the transaction. (AdAge)…

“Augmented reality” apps put a layer of locally relevant data on top of the scene around you. But who owns the rights to ad space within augmented reality platforms? Currently there’s nothing keeping multiple brands from owning the same space. (Mashable)…

Foursquare, Groupon, and the Market-Making Problem

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With Groupon’s filing to go public last week, there has been even more debate over the two-sided market strategy of consumers and local merchants. Another business that has focused on this approach is Foursquare. Is the window of opportunity closing for Foursquare to become the breakout success it could be? The answer depends on how much the company is willing to change its DNA to serve both sides of their market — and perhaps take a few lessons on self-serve and average selling price from Groupon…

Street Fight Daily: 06.06.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… If Groupon slams the brakes on marketing costs, the value of hyperlocal online inventory will fall after a recent surge in demand, writes Jeff Bercovici. On the other hand, if Groupon is wrong and it has to keep spending to attract customers the way it is now, then it will likely never be profitable and those ad dollars will go away anyway. (Forbes)… Since Groupon filed its S-1 on Thursday, there have been hundreds of negative articles written about Groupon. While some of the concerns brought up about Groupon are legitimate, many of them are unfounded, writes Vinicius Vacanti. (Yipit Blog)…

Street Fight Daily: 06.03.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…

In its long awaited S-1, it’s clear that Groupon has impressive topline growth. However, when looking at it’s oldest markets, it appears that their business model is deteriorating. (Yipit Blog)…

Several more perspectives on the Groupon IPO: a Twitter debate over the company’s doomed-ness, a look at who owns what stake in the company, a warning to investors by Andrew Mason, and some red flags for potential investors. (GigaOm, TechCrunch, PaidContent, Business Insider)…

Groupon to Go Public — And Then Where?

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The point of the company that eventually became Groupon was initially to inspire group action around a political or social cause. It was called ThePoint.

The point of Groupon… well, that may yet to be determined. The company, which filed an S-1 today with the Securities & Exchange Commission for a $750 million initial public offering, is known as a group-buying firm offering deep discounts on everything from hair removal to horse rides, complete with clever copy in each offer. It has seen a meteoric rise in revenue, earning $644 million in the first quarter of 2011 alone, up from $713.3 million in all of 2010. It has 83 million subscribers across 43 countries. And, as CEO Andrew Mason revealed this week at AllThingsD’s D9 conference, about half of its 8,000 workforce is in sales. Groupon has some serious feet on the streets…

Street Fight Daily: 06.02.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.Hyperlocal network Main Street Connect has rolled out 32 community-based news sites in Westchester County, N.Y., in its biggest launch to date. The move comes a few weeks after MSC added CentralMassNews, which owns ten local news sites in central Massachusetts, to its network. (Paid Content)… Groupon, as everyone knows by now, is growing like crazy. How crazy? CEO Andrew Mason revealed at the D9 technology conference that he now employs 8,000 people, which is up from 1,500 a year ago. Approximately half of these employees are in sales. (TechCrunch)…

Roost’s DIY Social Media for Small Businesses

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As more and more companies vie for marketing dollars from small business owners, many businesses find the growing options confusing. They barely have time to keep up with the demands of online marketing on sites like Facebook and Twitter — and it’s unclear whether it’s best for them to place an ad on a hyperlocal site or offer a daily deal where they lose 75% of the sale…

Street Fight Daily: 06.01.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… What’s next in the evolution of geolocation? Foursquare’s most attractive qualities — the social game of checking in and the availability of local deals — arguably provide a foundation. But will we need more value if checkins are ever to hit the mainstream? (Mashable)… Google is beginning the roll-out of its Daily Deals service, Google Offers, today. The news that Google is getting into the daily deals space is not a surprise. Google attempted and failed to acquire Groupon for $6 billion last year. Google claims that Offers will take the heavy lifting of marketing off of the business owner, allowing the business to simply focus on the customer. (Mashable, The Next Web)…

Case Study: Hotel Uses Deals to Fill Rooms Without Diluting the Brand

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Laura McIver knows her demographic. As the general manager at the Canary Hotel in Santa Barbara, California, McIver targets an upscale clientele by advertising in strategic publications and by offering exclusive deals online. She’s also found success in her partnership with SocialStay, a mobile application that lets users check-in and connect with fellow guests at select hotels…

Street Fight Daily: 05.31.11

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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)…

Street Fight Daily: 05.25.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups. Groupon seems to be dancing around the issue of mobile. Location-based social networks like Foursquare can be great partners, but they can also be competitors. (Business Insider)… Real estate website Trulia is set to roll out a new feature that will allow users to view crime statistics for 50 metro areas in the U.S. The crime maps are based on data collected from more than 1,000 different sources, aggregated into more than 5 million data points on the maps. (GigaOm)…

Partnership With Foursquare Is a Natural Step for Groupon

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Earlier this week All Things Digital reported that Groupon and Foursquare were discussing a partnership to push local deals targeted to location-aware check-ins. The media world has been buzzing about the rumor, but neither company has broken an official silence to confirm (or deny) the partnership or discussions. Perhaps it’s just a foregone conclusion, though, that Groupon would add immediacy and social distribution to its model. In fact it already has…

Where Hyperlocal Meets Digital-Out-Of-Home

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The digital out-of-home advertising sector — all those networked screens you see on top of gas pump tops and in elevators, 7-11s, waiting rooms and the back seats of taxis — couldn’t be happier about the rise in popularity of location apps and daily deal coupons. Finally the hyperlocal targeting that is a part of what these networks of screens can do has some consumer-driven energy and contextual relevance behind it…

Street Fight Daily: 05.24.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups… Dennis Crowley says Foursquare is growing at a rate of 1 million users per month. The company currently boasts 600 million check-ins total, averaging 3 million per day from its nearly 10 million users. (The Next Web)…

Patch President Warren Webster says the company’s criteria for growth in new communities is sound and sustainable, as is its locally centric business model. He says early reader metrics are exceeding expectations. (NetNewsCheck)…

Deals Get Personal With Tenka’s DIY Platform

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Self-service hyperlocal advertising platform Tenka was founded when Google vets Nhon Ma and Tim Zhou, who had previously focused on display advertising, saw a “huge opportunity” in leveraging data to enhance the value of daily deals. The idea was to make Groupon-like offers more relevant, more personalized — and more local — by empowering merchants to create their own offers and distributing those offers via location-based services and social media platforms…

Street Fight Daily: 05.23.11

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.

Groupon’s new partnership with Loopt looks like an aggressive move to extend its mobile availability before Facebook Deals gets out of the gate. This sort of partnership could work well for Location Based Services like Loopt because it puts a dedicated sales force on the task of selling deals. (ReadWriteWeb)…

Groupon and Foursquare are in partnership talks. The arrangement is likely to see Groupon deals targeted to Foursquare users’ check-ins. (All Things Digital)…