Street Fight Daily: 12.02.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Zaarly App Aims to Deliver Customers to Small Businesses (Mashable)…
Groupon’s Exaggerated Deals Will Be Probed By UK Government (PaidContent)…
Mobile Commerce To Hit $6.7B In 2011 (MediaPost)…
Street Fight Daily: 11.10.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
News Futurists DNAinfo Expanding to NYC’s Outer Boroughs and Chicago (New York Observer)
DNAinfo, a neighborhood-centric Manhattan news start-up, will expand to all five boroughs in early 2012. After rolling across New York City, the company will begin national expansion, starting in Chicago and hiring about 30 reporters total…
Rumor: LivingSocial & Groupon Looking to Acquire SCVNGR (BostInnovation)
Gregory Gomer: For the past few weeks, we have heard rumblings that both LivingSocial and Groupon are interested in acquiring SCVNGR, and that the options are currently being evaluated by SCVNGR’s top level execs and board of directors…
Street Fight Daily: 11.09.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Yelp Hires Goldman and Citigroup to Lead I.P.O. (NYT/Dealbook)
Yelp, the online reviews site for local businesses, has hired Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to lead its initial public offering of stock, which is expected to value the company at $1.5 billion to $2 billion…
CrowdMob Builds a Tapjoy+Groupon for Distributing Local Deals (GigaOm)
The company offers merchants and retailers a way to distribute their local deals through third-party apps, incentivizing mobile users to buy a deal in exchange for virtual currency or goods…
Street Fight Daily: 10.27.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
“Deals don’t mean dollars. That was a point of consensus at the inaugural Street Fight Summit,” writes Jeremy Caplan. “A key question threaded throughout the conference was how best to turn local consumers into reliable revenue streams. The most valuable insights for independent publishers in attendance centered around new opportunities for better serving local businesses.” (Poynter)…
When hyperlocal news sites can’t compete on CPMs, where else can they find revenue? The St. Louis Beacon, a nonprofit online publication for regional news, sought to tie revenue strategies to its mission, business manager Shawn McGinness said. (PaidContent)…
Street Fight Daily: 10.19.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Daily deals are coming to the radio. Clear Channel, the media giant that owns 850 stations, has made an exclusive deal with LivingSocial to offer its discount offerings on 500 of its stations, the companies announced on Tuesday. (New York Times/Media Decoder)…
Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley expects the company to remain independent for another year, but admits he’s open to an acquisition: “The only thing we want to do is build a product,” Crowley said. “If we do it independently that’s great, if we do it as part of a company that’s another story.” (Business Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: 10.18.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
New York state tax administrators have concluded merchants should collect sales tax on the full face value of items purchased with vouchers from Groupon, LivingSocial and other Internet discount deal sites —if the vouchers are for a specific dollar amount. (Forbes)…
New York City’s Gothamist is thriving with an average 2 million unique visitors each month reading its eclectic brand of voice-forward reporting and aggregation geared to the young and well-heeled. Its success has allowed it to spin off sister sites across the country and around the globe. (NetNewsCheck)…
Street Fight Daily: 10.14.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
MapQuest’s new Vibe uses data collected from the past 10 years about cities’ most popular destinations. Vijay Bangaru, MapQuest vice president of product, writes that the concept originated out of a shift in users’ needs from “maps and directions” to “local search.” (Mashable)…
Groupon and LivingSocial succeed because consumers perceive them as great deals. But is that true? Perhaps not. Thumbtack.com called 10 vendors offering daily deals (five from Groupon and five from LivingSocial) and found eight instances where they were quoted a price over the phone that was cheaper than the advertised regular price being offered. (Business Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: 10.11.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Microsoft appears to be readying the formal launch of a Bing-branded daily deals website powered by white-label group buying platform service provider Tippr. This offering is notably different from Microsoft’s earlier launch of Bing Deals, which basically features links to aggregated deals from a number of partners. (TechCrunch)…
The daily deal industry has jolted a formerly sleepy corner of the $30 billion online advertising market: the local part of the paid search marketing business. Local search ads that included references to towns and cities were not in demand until daily deal companies started paying handsomely to track down people interested in neighborhood goods and services. (Reuters)…
Street Fight Daily: 10.10.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
All of the major players in the daily deals industry experienced significant gross revenue growth in September. Total industry gross revenue jumped 12%, from an estimated $238 million in August to $267 million in September. The number of deals offered increased by 6%. (Yipit Blog)…
Reports of the death of Groupon’s IPO plans have apparently been greatly exaggerated. The online daily deals pioneer filed an updated version of its S-1 document with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, as part of its preparation for a planned initial public offering of its stock. (GigaOm)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.22.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
Ad sales chief Scott Colontonio is leaving AOL’s hyperlocal network Patch after little over a year to join Google. Meanwhile, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong reiterated his assertion that some Patch outposts would be profitable by the end of the year. (PaidContent)…
LivingSocial may raise more than $200 million in funding that would give it a valuation of as much as $6 billion, rather than proceeding toward an initial public offering. (Bloomberg)…
Gilt City’s City Unlisted: Merging Commerce and Content
Gilt City, the group-buying offshoot of luxury commerce brand Gilt Groupe, has — among other things — built its business on developing a strong editorial voice mostly through the selection and presentation of its offers. In May, however, the company launched an under-the-radar beta project called City Unlisted to experiment with an alternative approach to pairing content and commerce…