Street Fight Daily: Instacart Aims for Positive Cash Flow, Google Drives App Installs
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Instacart Looks to Build an Empire with Promoted Ad Business… Google’s App Ad Business Drivers Billion Installs in Last Four Months… Ads Help Businesses Stay Afloat, But Slows Load Times End Web Visits…
Street Fight Daily: Uber Gets Merchants to Pay for Rides, Shopify Teams Up with Postmates
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Offers Gets Merchants to Pay for Rides… More Than 21,000 Businesses Can Now Add Same-Day Delivery Through Postmates… Vacation Rental Startups Attract $100 Million in Funding So Far This Year…
Street Fight Daily: Apple Pay Coming to Mobile Web, DoorDash Moves Into Yelp Territory
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Apple Pay Moving to the Mobile Web, Could Give Big Boost to Mcommerce (Marketing Land)… DoorDash Takes On Yelp, Offers ‘Objective’ Restaurant Quality Scores (VentureBeat)… Microsoft Tells Possible Yahoo Buyers It Would Consider Backing Bids With Big Bucks (Recode)…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon’s New Merchant App, Google Announces ‘Analytics 360’ Ad Products
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Groupon Launches New Merchant App That Puts the Daily Deal Front and Center (TechCrunch)… Google Introduces Products That Will Sharpen Its Ad Focus (New York Times)… Yelp’s Founder Once Thought No One Would Want to Post Opinions on the Internet (Chicago Tribune)…
Street Fight Daily: The Longevity of Online Grocery Delivery, How Foursquare is Winning SXSW
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Is Online Grocery Actually the Future? (Business Insider)… The Winner of This Year’s SXSW Interactive Is… (Forbes)… You Hate Paying Instacart Delivery Fees, So Pepsi Is Footing the Bill (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Street Fight Daily: Google Experiments With Local Services Concierge, Yext Reports 48% Revenue Growth
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yext Sees $88.8 Million Revenue, 48% Growth for Location Data (TechCrunch)… Don’t Call a Plumber — Call (or Text) Google Concierge (Blumenthal’s)… Yahoo Labors to Carry On With Core Business While Exploring Sale (New York Times)…
Street Fight Daily: Google’s Vision for AMP, Millennials Are Changing the Privacy Game for Marketers
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… A Q&A with Google’s Head of News On Its Vision for Accelerated Mobile Pages (Nieman Lab)… Digital-Savvy Millennials Will Sacrifice Privacy for Personalization, Says Exec (Adweek)… Overnight, the App for Booking Last-Minute Spaces with Local Hosts, Closes $2.5M Seed Round (TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: Whole Foods Invests in Instacart, Ad Blocking Debate Gets Tempers Flaring
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Whole Foods to Invest in Instacart, Signs New Multi-Year Delivery Deal (Recode)… Fear, Loathing, and Opportunity On Display as Ad Industry Eyeballs Specter of Mobile Ad Blocking (TechCrunch)… Foursquare Won’t Be Facebook and That’s Just Fine, Crowley Says (Bloomberg)…
In 2016, the Local Economy Is No Longer Local
Yes, we still shop at local stores, but the Walmart in the nearby shopping plaza isn’t the only competitor the local store needs to keep an eye on. Increasingly, it’s a host of online vendors and the growing crop of on-demand startups that have become an indelible feature of the local business landscape — both enablers and usurpers of their merchant partners.
Street Fight Daily: Nextdoor Going International, Uber Wants to Help Book Travel
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Nextdoor, the $1.1B Social Network for Neighbors, Is Finally Expanding Overseas (Business Insider)… Uber Is Thinking of Getting Into the Travel Business (Business Insider)… In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All (New Yorker)…
Company Culture Priorities for 2016
In the Street Culture column we launched in 2015, Street Fight began looking more closely at the clever, fun, and smart ways startups in the hyperlocal industry are building culture into their organizations as they scale. No two companies we spoke with were the same, but many are driving their cultures along the same tracks. Based on our interviews, here are the top four culture-focused priorities for startups to address in 2016.
On-Demand and Deep Linking Becoming More Deeply Linked
The worlds of on-demand and deep-linking took another step closer when ride-sharing giant Uber announced a new mechanism for app developers to incorporate a button for users to request an Uber driver. Expect to see more of this kind of app integration among on-demand services, giving the market leaders greater scale and distribution.
Street Fight Daily: Postmates Acquires Local Discovery Startup Sosh, Facebook’s New SMB Ad Products
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Postmates Is Buying Sosh, a Service for Discovering Local Activities (Fortune)… Facebook’s New Tools Let Merchants Tailor Ads for Nearby Consumers (Adweek)… How Handy’s Founder Oisin Hanrahan Is Scaling His Startup into an On-Demand Powerhouse (The Next Web)…
Street Culture: Humility and Good Conversations at Instacart
On-demand grocery shopping and delivery service Instacart is make headway at disrupting a multi-billion-dollar industry. Driving that effort is a relentless focus on satisfying customers. “One policy we’ve implemented at Instacart is that every employee, from the engineers up to our CEO, goes out shopping once a quarter to get an understanding of being a shopper and how our service affects the customer. Everybody here does it,” says vice president of people Mathew Caldwell.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s New Retail Features, Local Mobile Ad Spend to Reach $6.5 Billion by 2019
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Woos Retailers and Shoppers Alike with New Features (Gigaom)… Mobile Spend by Local Advertisers Forecast to Hit $6.5B by 2019 (MediaPost)… Security, Data Breaches Slow Down Mobile Payments Adoption (eMarketer)…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Wants Your TV Ad Budget, Are Ad Blockers ‘Highway Robbers?’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Why Sheryl Sandberg Says Big Brands Should Spend Their TV Ad Budgets on Facebook (Adweek)… Ad Blocking Companies Are Like Highway Robbers, IAB Says (Wall Street Journal)… Instacart Hires Its First CFO (TechCrunch)…
How Badly Do Consumers Really Want Grocery Delivery?
Instacart is bumping up against the realities of the economy. There are two countervailing trends that are working against the idea of grocery delivery: frugality, and shopping-as-entertainment.