Street Fight Daily: 06.03.11
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)…
WSB’s Tracy Record: You Can’t Do Hyperlocal on a Template
When West Seattle Blog launched, the site didn’t carry any ads — not even Google Adsense ads which co-founder Tracy Record thought were “ugly and cluttery.” At the time, the site was more of a passion project than a business. But when they finally got advertising two years later, Record says it didn’t take very long before she and her partner were turning a profit: “It was rather rapid in terms of people embracing us and we were in the black in the first year.” …
Street Fight Daily: 05.24.11
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)…
Memo From Patch EIC: More Articles = More UVs
In an email to regional editors last week obtained by Street Fight, Brian Farnham, the editor-in-chief of AOL’s Patch network of hyperlocal sites, suggested that the sites should increase unique visitors by upping post production, and touted an experiment at 14 Florida sites where increased posting resulted in more uniques. …
Street Fight Daily: 05.12.11
Murphy USA, a gas station chain with 1,000 locations situated in the parking lots of Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, announced Wednesday that it’s offering $2 off a $20 purchase of gas with a Foursquare checkin. (Mashable)…
Gannett Co. is in the process of launching dozens of hyperlocal Web sites in 10 different markets, in a bold and risky initiative. DataSphere handles ad sales for Gannett’s hyperlocal sites, which are viewed as a growth medium because they provide smaller local businesses with an affordable, highly targeted ad platform. (NetNewsCheck)…
Yelp’s international sites have been growing like crazy, with non-U.S. traffic doubling in the past year….
Webster Says Patch Must ‘Be the Community,’ Others Weigh In
This is a the third installment in a series about hyperlocal past and present. Read here about Digital City / AOL, CitySearch, and Microsoft’s Sidewalk…
I reached out to Warren Webster, President of AOL’s Patch network, the day before their big multi-thousand-blogger launch for thoughts on some of the views of the “Local 1.0” set discussed in the previous posts in this series. In an email he said: “It’s important to note that Patch isn’t citizen journalism. Patch is a platform staffed by professional journalists with an average of nine years experience. Patch also offers many opportunities for members of the community to have a voice on this platform — and for SMBs to drive consumer actions.”..
Street Fight Daily: 05.06.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
AOL’s Tim Armstrong just keeps piling his chips higher and higher on his Patch bet, but the odds of winning continue to be extremely slim, writes Matthew Ingram. (GigaOm)…
Google’s Marissa Mayer — who took charge of Google’s Location Services division in October — yesterday described Business Photos, a new product that will take Google Maps indoors. She also spoke with Jason Kincaid about the problems facing Google Latitude, and how Google Places is going to differentiate itself from Yelp in the future. (Paid Content, TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: 05.05.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Those who use social location-based apps such as Foursquare or Facebook Places represent just 17% of the mobile population, according to a new study. Of those opting out of participating in the checkin craze, or any other social location behavior for that matter, 48% cited privacy concerns as their primary reason for not doing so. (Mashable)…
During AOL’s earnings call, one of the top questions from analysts was what is AOL’s plan with Patch? The company dumped $40 million into the hyperlocal network for the second quarter in a row, and it didn’t generate much revenue. Here’s Tim Armstrong’s explanation. (Business Insider)…
IAC-owned local media and advertising property CityGrid Media is acquiring social media monitoring and sentiment analysis platform BuzzLabs. The company allows publishers to leverage social content, keeps consumers better informed, and helps local businesses monitor their presence across the web. (TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: 05.04.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.… E-commerce giant eBay said in February that it is eying deals that more closely link the online and brick-and-mortar shopping experience. Hyperlocal has become a common phrase for the company as it targets firms that can connect shoppers to local merchants. (The Street)…
AOL HuffPo is launching three new Patch sites geared towards Latino readership in Southern California by the end of the year. No decisions have apparently been made yet regarding which communities those sites will cover. (FishbowlLA)…
“People love getting advertising that is applicable to them, and 90% of every dollar is spent offline within 10 miles of the home,” says Topix CEO Chris Tolles. “Great hyperlocal advertising works to connect consumers to applicable business where they live.” (The Next Web)…
Street Fight Daily: 05.03.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Add another big player to the list of Groupon competitors: AT&T. The telecom giant Monday began pre-registration to consumers in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth for a service via the company’s yp.com that will send daily deals to consumers. (Mashable)…
New York magazine is about to launch a weekly “deals” e-newsletter and online adjunct, but instead of matching offers play to advertisers, it will aggregate “the best of the best” of other e-commerce sites’ picks. (PaidContent)…
“Location is a serious battleground, and whoever has the best handle on it, both gathering it and using it, is best positioned to reap a lot of money as we build a lot of services based on location,” writes Ryan Kim. (GigaOm)…
HuffPo Harnesses Patch Hyperlocals for Bin Laden News
In the months since AOL bought The Huffington Post, the company’s execs have talked a number of times about plans to incorporate coverage from Patch’s network of hyperlocal sites into HuffPo’s national report. Arianna Huffington herself recently said she expects Patch will be a key element of HuffPo’s coverage of the 2012 presidential election, and Patch local reports from California were recently used in stories about the Japanese tsunami. But last night we really saw that collaboration in action, as HuffPo drew on Patch’s network to flesh out out its coverage with hyperlocal reactions to the death of Osama bin Laden…
Street Fight Daily: 05.02.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Online local media and search company Local.com has acquired location-based shopping data aggregator Krillion for $3.5 million in cash. The company provides local shopping information on over 70,000 consumer products from over 50,000 retailers, including in-store availability, comparison pricing, current discounts and images. (TechCrunch)…
Startup thruSocial offers neighborhood pizza places and Pilates studios a one-stop platform to create their own promotions, which the company distributes to social-networking sites, as well as its own consumer-end deals site, thrupon.com. (GigaOm)…
AOL’s Patch network of hyperlocal blogs, which has suggested that a number of initiatives are coming to increase community engagement with its sites, has hired well-respected Brooklyn hyperlocal blogger Liena Zagare to lead the effort. (PaidContent)…
Street Fight Daily: 04.29.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
For AOL to have real success with Patch, the company will need to employ the model of companies that probably want Patch to fail. (Forbes)…
“The problem with local is that everything is local,” writes CityVoter’s Josh Walker. “An agency should be able to talk intelligently about the combination of these approaches and be comfortable working with multiple vendors to reach the audience in the geography a client needs to activate.” (Business Insider)…
In the midst of a busy month of expansion, LivingSocial has announced its expansion into nine new U.S. markets. (Daily Deal Media)…
‘Newsonomics’ Author Ken Doctor: ‘The Play Is for Tablets’
Media industry analyst and consultant Ken Doctor has been watching the local news space for decades, long before “hyperlocal” was coined. He spent 21 years at Knight Ridder, where he first observed that consumers are willing to pay for local content — and contends that they are doing so even now, as they pick up their local paper. Doctor, an analyst for Outsell, a global research and advisory firm, and for his own firm, Content Bridges, frequently appears at conferences about the transformation of the news industry, and writes regular columns both on his own Newsonomics blog and for Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab. He is non-plussed by hyperlocal efforts like EveryBlock and Topix but sees potential in AOL’s Patch…
Baristanet’s Debra Galant: How Patch Is Like Wal-Mart
Since its 2004 launch, Essex County, New Jersey-based Baristanet has often been held up as a hyperlocal news success story. Veteran journalists Liz George and Debra Galant created their local information site to be like a coffee shop where people in the three suburban towns they covered could learn about small-scale news and events around them.
Street Fight spoke recently with Galant about the site’s scope and history, whether stories about potholes can really be monetized, and what she thinks of AOL’s Patch...
EIC Brian Farnham on Patch’s Local-National Dance With HuffPo
AOL’s Patch was, handily, the brainchild of Tim Armstrong before he became the media giant’s CEO. In 800 local communities across the country, Patch is one of the bright spots in hyperlocal business models, with each “Patch” manned by a single editor and an ad sales person, and supported by a network of regional editors. But how will AOL’s acquisition of Huffington Post impact Patch? Well, just yesterday Arianna Huffington announced that she is planning to hire as many as 800 new full-time employees to beef up content on Patch’s network of sites and reduce the use of freelancers. Street Fight spoke recently with editor-in-chief Brian Farnham about Patch’s mission, the importance of pothole stories, how to help local businesses navigate online advertising, and the local-national strategy it’s developing with HuffPo.
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Street Fight Daily: 04.12.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups.…
Patch’s local news module widget is hardly a new idea, but it’s one that few local newspaper companies have made work, despite the economy of its potential costs and benefits. Will Patch leapfrog newspaper sites with this old-is-new innovation? (Newsonomics)…
Twitter’s Local Trends feature has now expanded to 70 more places. This seems likely to foreshadow a future when advertisers will be able to purchase trending topics on a local level. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Four unsolicited lessons that Groupon’s Andrew Mason should take from what Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg just did in China. (Forbes)…
What’s the Right Ratio of Editors to Contributors in Hyperlocal?
What is the right ratio for the number of editors required to manage a number of contributors? And as the economics of content change and hyperlocal publishers try new models, should that ratio change? Must it change?