Street Fight Daily: 11.18.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Yelp Files for $100 Million IPO (GigaOm)…
Major Newspaper Publishers Band Together On Social Shopping Portal (PaidContent)…
Patch Traffic Rides High on Local Elections and Hurricanes — But can a Drive-by Audience Be Enough? (Nieman Lab)…
Case Study: How One Agency Helps National Brands Go Hyperlocal
It’s Ron Blevins’ goal to help agencies help brands navigate the world of hyperlocal media. As the vice president of digital strategy for Novus, an ad agency owned by conglomerate Omnicom that is focused solely on the local space, he has seen brands move from newspapers to hyperlocal sites, where they are finding more trust and loyalty — in some cases a 20% increase in ROI over national sites…
Will the 2012 Election Be a Hyperlocal Breakthrough?
As we approach 2012, hyperlocal sites and networks around the country are gearing up to leverage their content and attract what promises to be a huge windfall of political advertising. At the recent Street Fight Summit in New York, we gathered four top executives who are already thinking deeply about the potential opportunity for hyperlocal in next year’s election cycle…
Street Fight Daily: 11.07.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
Combined Urban Airship + Simple Geo Take $15 Million in Funding (Uncrunched)
It looks like Simple Geo may have made a solid bet after all. Last week the company was acquired by Urban Airship in an all stock transaction that was actually part of a much larger financing: Urban Airship’s Series C round of funding…
Kevin Rose’s Oink: Stop Rating Places – Rate the Stuff Inside Them Instead (SiliconFilter)
The big difference between Oink and Foursquare or Yelp is that Oink doesn’t focus on places so much as on the things inside them. Instead of rating a local restaurant, for example, you would rate the pizza you had there…
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: 11.02.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Aol’s Patch Taps Ad Tech Startup PaperG To Boost Local Ad Sales (TechCrunch)
PaperG has announced that its technology will be released in over 100 of Patch’s markets, enabling Patch sales teams access instant ad creation, management, and optimization for their litany of local advertisers…
Groupon Founders Will Control Majority Stake Even After IPO (AllThingsD)
Groupon has conducted a two-for-one stock split and recapitalized all of its outstanding shares into newly issued shares of Class A and B stock. CEO Andrew Mason, Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky and Director Bradley Keywell will now control 58.1 percent of the voting shares…
Street Fight Daily: 10.28.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Google is collaborating with discount luxury network Gilt City as it looks to expand its Google Offers deals service. The partnership comes as the search giant has been adding a number of new coupon features and retailers to its mobile payments product, Google Wallet. (PaidContent)…
The Guardian is testing a new hyperlocal service called “n0tice,” which is an attempt to create a publishing platform based on location — and it uses the metaphor of a community noticeboard to get there. (GigaOm)…
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)…
Patch vs. Main Street Connect: How Will Hyperlocal Scale?
Does size really matter in hyperlocal? Publishers debated the point on a panel during the first day of the Street Fight Summit. Patch CEO Warren Webster, naturally, said yes: “2010 was all about scaling up. We do believe that size is important.” Main Street Connect CEO Carll Tucker disagreed, saying that his publication started small and built outward, not wanting to “mass produce and see the wheels fall off.”
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: 10.07.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.
Groupon said in a regulatory filing that it plans to “significantly” reduce online marketing spending over time as such investments yield insufficient returns. (Bloomberg)
“AOL’s management may be committed to Patch for now, but the company can’t continue pouring money into an unprofitable entity forever, no matter how much Webster talks about a “long-term” investment,” writes Mathew Ingram. (GigaOm)…
Street Fight Daily: 10.06.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
U.K. regional newspaper publisher Northcliffe Media wants publishers to pay to be part of its hyperlocal network. The group is beginning a “franchise” model, where “franchisees” must pay Northcliffe at least £6,995 ($10810.24) plus VAT to run their own local site. For that, they would get keys to the site, the “ability to sell advertising space” themselves, a “marketing pack” and “handbook” and a whole three days’ training. (Paid Content)…
“It’s not worth trying to be comprehensive” in hyperlocal, writes publisher Richard Jones. “Focus on doing what you’re able to do and do it well, rather than trying to take on the impossible.” (Richard Jones Journalism Blog)…
Street Fight Daily: 10.03.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Loopt has been allowed its first patent, and it could be a big one. In layman’s terms, the patent describes using your location to display relevant ads and offers on top of a map, as an interstitial, or as a text ad — another claim also discusses displaying where your friends are on the same map. (TechCrunch)…
A basic contradiction at the heart of the daily deals industry on the Internet has become apparent. Consumers have been told: You will never pay full price again. The merchants were hearing: You are going to get new customers who will stick around and pay full price. Disappointment was inevitable. (New York Times)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.30.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
AOL appears to be preparing us for some kind of neighborhood-based social network built around MapQuest. It has registered a bunch of domains this year that all point to a page that says something called “mqVibe” is coming soon. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Facebook Deals official last day was Sunday, but sources say the company’s withdrawal is not a bad omen for the industry. All of the companies in the space, including newbie Google, are rapidly creating mobile solutions that will recognize when people are close to a deal and allow them to redeem it immediately. (AllThingsD)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.26.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Margo Georgiadis is leaving her job as Groupon’s COO after just five months on the executive team to return to Google, her former employer, as President, Americas. The company has also filed an amended S-1, which includes revised revenue numbers based on a change in accounting. (TechCrunch)…
One self-described “riled” Patch editor from the East Coast says that in addition to his or her normal job responsibilities, this editor has also been asked to start drumming up ad sales leads. (Business Insider)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.23.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Google Offers didn’t do particularly well in August – but the daily deal product radically improved in September. Through just the first three weeks of the month, Google has already surpassed last month’s total revenue of $265k and is on track to more than double this figure by month’s end. (Yipit Blog)…
A source says that AOL is using “smoke and mirrors” trying to get 10 Patch sites profitable by the end of the year. It all has to do with some clever accounting, pushing a bigger chunk of ad dollars from regional campaigns into the target towns at the expense of the rest. (Business Insider)…
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)…
Why the Merchant API Is Key to Foursquare’s Future
Last week, Foursquare updated its business page, adding case studies for merchants and use studies for brands, and generally improving the user experience. Since updating its merchant platform in the spring, the location-based social networking company has quietly launched an offensive to create a viable B2B component in their business, laying the groundwork for future monetization…
Street Fight Daily: 09.19.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
The online business of serving up daily deals has attracted millions of dollars in venture capital and spurred dozens of clones of market leaders Groupon Inc. and LivingSocial Inc. Now the industry is starting to shake out. (Wall Street Journal)…
“The national and regional coverage of Hurricane Irene was fine before the storm actually passed through my suburban New Jersey town. But then, what I wanted — and needed — to know came from my local AOL Patch site,” writes Harry Jessell. “The lesson here for broadcasters dabbling in hyperlocal websites or mobile apps is that you can’t do it on the cheap.” (TVNewsCheck)…
Patch Pushback: Warren Webster Fires Back Amid Analysis and Criticism
Rick Robinson gets the lowdown from Patch’s president about why they’ve lost sales execs; the network’s plans to “stand on its own financially; and a reply to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s suggestion that Patch could possibly, at some point, be considered for a sale. He also comments on the HuffPo-Patch dynamic, neither confirming nor denying that Patch will merge editorial operations with HuffPo.