Street Fight Daily: 07.07.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Groupon’s S-1 filing for an IPO last month certainly got a lot of negative ink. Rattled by the intense media and analyst reaction to the filing, sources said the Chicago-based company commissioned a poll of its consumers and merchants to gauge the impact. (AllThingsD)…
Two weeks ago, Foursquare announced that there were over 10,000,000 people using the service. Now the company has announced that it has over half a million merchants signed up as well. (Foursquare Blog)…
Street Fight Daily: 07.06.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
Gilt City, the local daily deals counterpart of high-end flash sales site Gilt, has established a private loyalty rewards program using Facebook Groups. (Mashable)…
Foursquare released a new feature yesterday: Notifications. Unlike the push notifications for check-ins you’re used to seeing on the Foursquare mobile apps, these new Notifications focus on other activities on Foursquare “beyond the check-in.” (TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: 07.05.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
“Instead of telling small businesses to avoid daily deals, how about trying to understand why some small businesses are having success?” writes Vinicius Vacanti. “With that understanding, we could then educate other small businesses on how they might be able to replicate that success themselves.” (TechCrunch)…
“While location advertising may not be new, marketers can now digitally localize their ads,” writes David Staas. “The question is, how do brands win in this new world of location media?” (Mashable)…
Street Fight Daily: 07.01.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
It is still not too late for Groupon to get back on track and succeed in China if they can implement the right strategies with focus and speed, writes Helen Wang. Someone has to change the game. (Forbes)…
Ever wonder what Groupon’s all-time, best-selling promotion was? Research conducted by data scientist Paul Butler reveals just that. (Huffington Post)…
Street Fight Daily: 06.29.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
A few months after being named COO of the Huffington Post Media Group, Jon Brod’s responsibilities are being narrowed to focus on running AOL’s Patch network of hyperlocal sites. Brod co-founded Patch with Tim Armstrong and was CEO when it was acquired in 2009. (Paid Content)…
Location-based service advertising will grow to over one-third of all mobile advertising in four years. By 2015, location-based advertising will be $6.2 billion, according to Pyramid Research. (MediaPost)…
Street Fight Daily: 06.27.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
LivingSocial seems to be following Groupon’s lead in acquiring local daily deal sites to serve as a foundation for discount distribution on a global scale. (TechCrunch)…
Could Offers become a massive new revenue stream for Google — the “second huge growth engine” that Google has long searched for in vain? SAI spoke to reps of merchants who have signed on to offer Google Offers in New York, as well as Google’s Eric Rosenblum, the lead engineer on Offers, and Google spokesperson Nate Tyler. (Silicon Alley Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: 06.24.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
In the automotive space, the responsibility for advertising is shifting from car makers to car dealers, and that means significant boost for local media, especially online, according to a report looking at the auto category from Borrell Associates. Online is pulling ad spending from car companies and dealers at a more accelerated rate, and display is likely to remain a key beneficiary. (Paid Content)…
In the quest for a unified database of places, geo-location startup Factual is making big strides. Yesterday it announced a partnership with SimpleGeo to maintain and power its places database, which up until now has offered a competing database of places in the eyes of developers. (TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: 06.23.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Foursquare is introducing its largest partnership to date: a national deal with American Express to offer discounts to cardholders when they check in on their cellphone at certain shops and restaurants. Substantial deals like those being offered to American Express cardholders may bring Foursquare and other location-based services further into the mainstream. (New York Times)…
Foursquare simply doesn’t have the salesforce to craft the same kind of deals that Groupon can. Groupon’s deals tend to be more alluring with deeper discounts. AmEx is helping Foursquare here by sourcing many of these deals itself through its own salesforce and existing relationships with local and national merchants, but it also gets to keep all the revenue. At least for now. (TechCrunch)…
Loopt Experiments With Inverted Daily Deal Structure
Loopt yesterday announced the debut of Loopt u-Deals, which turns the concept of the daily deal on its head. Instead of passively receiving daily discount offers and deciding whether to buy in, Loopt users will be able to hone their DIY chops by selecting their own “deal” (from among three available choices), requesting that Loopt approve it, and gathering friends for buy-in pending its approval…
Street Fight Daily: 06.22.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Daily deal aggregator Yipit just raised $6 million in a series B led by Highland Capital Partners. The company tracks 335 active deal services in 32 cities in North America. (TechCrunch)…
Foursquare has released version 3.2 of its iPhone app. Users will be pleased to find that Foursquare has streamlined the check-in process and improved its “Explore tab,” enabling users to navigate between nearby locations that are recommended as well as trending. (Mashable)…
HopStop Revamps, Adds Features and New Cities
HopStop, which was created in 2005 as a point-to-point transit routing website, has given itself a few facelifts over the years as it tries to stay unique and relevant in its increasingly crowded niche. The company announced another one yesterday, partnering up with big names like Yelp!, Hertz, Limos.com and Zvents, to become a “general lifestyle app.”
Street Fight Daily: 06.21.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Just-over-two-year-old Foursquare has just announced an important milestone: 10 million user accounts. The company will pass 750 million check-ins later this week, with users are now averaging about 3 million check-ins a day. (TechCrunch)…
EveryBlock, the website that collects community news and connects neighbors with each other, has hired a new president, Brian Addison, to oversee its growth and marketing efforts. Founder Adrian Holovaty remains with EveryBlock, focusing more on product than business. (Chicago Tribune)…
Street Fight Daily: 06.17.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… eBay is beefing up its mobile arsenal with its first local shopping app, powered by the local shopping search engine that eBay acquired in June, Milo. (Mashable)…
AOL chief Tim Armstrong said yesterday that “certain” Patch outlets — there are 800 and counting — should be profitable by Q3 or Q4, though he didn’t offer specifics. (Paid Content)…
Patch Partners With Geomentum to Attract Big Brands
It’s widely known that AOL’s Patch network has been hemorrhaging money at a rapid clip — and that ad sales across its network of over 800 hyperlocal sites aren’t yet where they would need to be to ultimately make the company viable. But a new partnership with the country’s largest hyperlocal ad agency, Geomentum, could potentially turn into a major boost.
Street Fight Daily: 06.16.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
In explaining the relevance of its new product, Geotagger, Fwix says that “LatLong” — latitude and longitude — is going to replace keywords as the standard for online ad buys, as daily deals and mobile usage become a greater part of publishers’ traffic and revenue streams. (PaidContent)…
While Groupon may want to move its IPO forward quickly, to capitalize on the enthusiasm generated by a new wave of Internet-related stock debuts, it will likely have to wait until late summer, or possibly the fall, for its stock to be priced and trading publicly. (Marketwatch)…
Street Fight Daily: 06.15.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
According to a Rice University study, most businesses don’t feel any loyalty toward a particular daily deal site, and over the next few years daily deal sites will likely “have to settle for lower shares of revenues from businesses compared to their current levels, and it will be harder and more expensive for them to find viable candidates to fill their pipelines of daily deals.” (PaidContent)…
Groupon Inc. Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis’ venture firm is an investor in rival LivingSocial and has ties to its board, a relationship that could pose a conflict, according to corporate-governance experts. (Bloomberg)…
Street Fight Daily: 06.13.11
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)…