Street Fight Daily: TaskRabbit Pivots, Bill Gurley On Uber
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… TaskRabbit Pivots, Launches On-demand Service for Cleaning, Handiwork, Moving, & Errands (VentureBeat)… How to Miss By a Mile: An Alternative Look at Uber’s Potential Market Size (Above the Crowd)… Birchbox Is Opening Its First Retail Store, And Here’s What It Looks Like (BusinessInsider)…
Why Retail Will Face the Same Fate as the Media Industry
Jeremy Rifkin, the prolific author who has served as an advisor to a number of world leaders, believes that the astronomical investments in Uber and Airbnb signal the breaking of a long-held “firewall” that kept the transformative effects of the Internet contained to the virtual world. Here Rifkin discusses why a small reduction in margins could kill traditional retail…
Street Fight Daily: Uber Looks to Driverless Cars, Datalogix Raises $45M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber CEO: Self-Driving Cars Are the Future, Drivers Are Not (Recode)… Datalogix Raises $45M to Help Advertisers Track Offline Purchases (Adage)… Payments Firm Swipely Raises $20M More As Its Processing Tally Crosses The $2B Mark (TechCrunch)…
At Westfield Labs, Rethinking Retail One Mall at a Time
In 2012, the Westfield Group, one of the largest owners of indoor malls in the world, opened Westfield Labs, a division tasked with developing technology to improve the retail experience. Street Fight recently caught up with Nicholas Cabrera, the division’s SVP of product development, to talk about the role of technology in the physical shopping experience…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s ‘Audience Network,’ Qualcomm Spins Off Beacon Business
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… With Ad Network, Facebook Targets Rest of Mobile World (AdAge)… Qualcomm Spins Off its Gimbal Bluetooth Beacon Biz Into a Separate Company (GigaOm)… Yext Acquires Software Consulting Firm Citrrus To Build Its Professional Services Team (TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: Airbnb Clashes In Court, DeliveryHero Raises $85M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… New York’s Case Against Airbnb Is Argued in Albany (New York Times)… Delivery Hero Gobbles Another $85M To Fuel A Price War With Just-Eat (TechCrunch)… Facebook’s “Nearby Friends” Must Work Against the Historical Failure of People Discovery (GigaOm)…
Walmart.com VP: For Consumers, The Digital Divide Does Not Exist
In the war to win the digital consumer, Walmart is betting that an all-of-the-above strategy will win out. During a speech at AdAge Digital in New York Tuesday, Brian Monahan, vice president of marketing at Walmart.com, said that world’s largest retailer remained committed to its brick-and-mortar stores and is focused on using technology to bridge the company’s digital and physical assets…
Street Fight Daily: CBS Outdoor Goes Public, Alibaba Invests in Retail
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… CBS Outdoor Shares Rise in First Day of Trading (Wall Street Journal)… Alibaba Invests $692 million in Chinese Department Store Operator (Reuters)… Uber’s Biggest Problem Isn’t Surge Pricing. What If It’s Sexual Harassment by Drivers? (Daily Beast)…
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Partners With YP, Airbnb’s $10B Valuation
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yelp, YP Partner in Local Advertising Deal (SearchEngineLand)… New Capital Could Raise Airbnb Value To $10 Billion (New York Times)… The Newsonomics of Selling Cars.com (Nieman Journalism Lab)…
Street Fight Daily: Mobile Search Explodes, Facebook Ends the Free Ride
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… In 2013 Mobile Search Exploded but the Dollars Haven’t Followed Suit (Yet) (Pando)… Facebook Is Ending the Free Ride (ValleyWag)… Foursquare CEO: Google and Yelp are ‘Incredibly Broken’ (VentureBeat)…
A ‘Connected’ Closet? As if — or Maybe Not
DigitasLBi Labs, the agency’s tech incubator in Paris, has built an in-store shopping assistant that uses image recognition software and Bluetooth low-energy beacons to match, recommend, and display possible additions to a shopper’s wardrobe. The group developed the “inspiration corridor” in conjunction with Klépierre, a french real estate company that operates malls across the country, and has installed the prototype in a Parisian shopping center…
Street Fight Daily: OpenTable Buys Ness, Chicago Cabbies Sue Uber
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… OpenTable Buys Ness, Tests Mobile Payments (TechCrunch)… Chicago Cabbies Sue Over Unregulated Uber, Lyft Services (Bloomberg)… For Yelp, an Expanding Push Into Politics (Hill)…
Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Posts $183M Loss, Airbnb Considers Cleaning Service
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… LivingSocial Posts $183M Loss in 2013 (Washington Business Journal)… Airbnb Is Testing Out An Affordable Cleaning Service For Hosts In San Francisco (TechCrunch)… In Defamation Lawsuit Over Yelp Reviews, Neither Side Wins (Washington Post)…
Why Ecommerce Companies Are Eyeing Brick-and-Mortar Retail
Over the past year, a string of ecommerce firms have invested in brick-and-mortar locations in an attempt to cash in on local markets that still account for over 90% of retail spending in the U.S. Manish Chandra, the founder the online fashion marketplace Poshmark, says physical locations will play an important part in ecommerce strategies moving forward…
Street Fight Daily: How Ford Uses Location Data, Radius Raises $13 M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… How Chrysler, Ford, GM, Others Use Auto Location Data (AdAge)… Palantir Co-Founder Chases New Data Source: Small Businesses (Wall Street Journal)… In an Economics Experiment, Uber Cuts Prices in 16 Cities (Businessweek)…
Schumer Urges Retailers, Location Tech Companies To Address Privacy Issues
During a speech at the Street Fight Summit in New York Friday, Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) spoke about his role in developing a privacy code of conduct for the location analytics industry, and the need for consumer advocates, technology companies and retailers to come together and pro-actively address the issue….
Study: More Local Shoppers Using Mobile Devices for Retail Purchases
As mobile devices become smarter, consumers are turning to their devices for more than last-minute directions and simple searches. A new study from Local Corporation finds that the the smartphone, once thought of as a place where consumers went for quick bits of information, is moving deeper into the decision cycle, playing a larger role in more in depth research, once associated with with tablet behavior…
In Fight Against Amazon, Retail Finds New Ally In Tech
Nearly two decades after the launch of Amazon.com, brick-and-mortar retailers still face a very real threat from the Web. But today, the industry has a critical new partner: the tech community. Retail has emerged as one of the fastest growing sectors in the technology industry, with venture capitalists, startups and retailers themselves, building products to fuse the web with our in-store experience…
Street Fight Daily: PayPal Redesigns App, Braintree’s on the Block
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… PayPal Refreshes Mobile App to Woo Shoppers and Fight Off Rivals (New York Times)… Braintree Is On The Block, Had Acquisition Talks With Square (TechCrunch)… Last-Minute Deal App HotelTonight Raises $45 Million (Wall Street Journal)…