DNAinfo Expands — As Does NYC’s Rep as Hyperlocal Incubator
With its expansion, DNAinfo joins a new class of hyperlocal companies — led by tech startups like Foursquare — that were spawned in New York City and now are in the process of scaling their products into other markets. New York (and Manhattan in particular) has become a hotbed of hyperlocal activity in recent years…
#SFS11 VIDEO: Fwix CEO Introduces ‘Location Search Optimization’
At the Street Fight Summit last month, Fwix’s Darian Shirazi introduced the concept of “Location Search Optimization,” or LSO, a process for ensuring that your content is location-aware. Adding just a few meta-tags and other bits of data to your site can ensure that your content is found by location-based search engines…
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…
#SFS11 VIDEO: What’s the Next Move for Daily Deals?
In a panel at the Street Fight Summit, three top executives from the daily deals industry debated how the phenomenon would evolve, how companies might bring more value to merchants, and what types of companies were most likely to survive. The panel featured Closely CEO Perry Evans, Dealbird CEO Chad Billmyer, and Group Commerce CEO Jonty Kelt…
#SFS11 VIDEO: Yipit’s Vacanti on Why Groupon’s Bubble Has Burst
At last week’s Street Fight Summit in New York, Yipit co-founder Vinicius Vacanti said that it was clear that Groupon’s valuation bubble has burst, but the daily deals industry and the big players in it are alive and well. In this full-length video of his keynote, he describes some of the dynamics affecting the deals companies, and suggests where the industry may be headed…
#SFS11 VIDEO: Jeff Jarvis Interviews Foursquare GM Evan Cohen
In a “fireside chat” that closed the first day of Street Fight Summit 2011 this week, BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis interviewed Evan Cohen, the general manager of Foursquare. Cohen touched on a number of different issues affecting the company, and revealed that Foursquare will soon be adding a “save” button that publishers can embed…
Street Fight Announces Research, More Events
Taking the podium on the second morning of the Street Fight Summit 2011 in New York City, Street Fight co-founder David Hirschman said that Hyperlocal Industries, which publishes the Street Fight website, would soon launch a research division and host more events like the Summit in 2012.
Real Estate Content Beyond the Listings
At the Street Fight Summit, speakers regularly mentioned that many local businesses are far behind the curve not just on hyperlocal marketing, but also in terms of a basic Web presence. No industry is better positioned to lead the way than real estate, said WellcomeMat founder Phil Thomas Di Giulio during a panel on Wednesday afternoon. The panel, […]
LBS and Retail: Big Brands vs. Small Merchants
Big brands and small businesses see value in location-based technology differently — but both are competing for the same mobile consumer. That was a key takeaway from a panel about location-based services on day two of the Street Fight Summit, moderated by Doug Stephens, president of Retail Prophet.
Yipit’s Vacanti: Groupon’s Bubble Has Burst
Has the bubble burst in the daily deals industry? Vinicius Vacanti, co-founder of Yipit, addressed this question while kicking off the second day of the Street Fight Summit in New York today. The Groupon valuation bubble might have burst, but the daily deals industry and the big players in it are alive and well, he said. Businesses are […]
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)…
Foursquare GM Cohen: ‘Save’ Button Coming Soon
In a fireside chat with Jeff Jarvis on the first day of the inaugural Street Fight Summit, Foursquare’s Evan Cohen said his company’s laser focus on location and mobile gives it a big advantage over other social companies. He noted that Facebook Places quickly flopped while Foursquare’s numbers kept growing. “We won a very exciting battle, and I feel good about it, but I won’t say we’ve won the war,” Cohen said…
CBS Pairs Traditional and Digital Media to Reach Consumers
On the first day of the inaugural Street Fight Summit, Ezra Kucharz, president of CBS Local Digital Media, said that TV and radio are not going anywhere, but that broadcasting will continue to integrate more with online and mobile. CBS has dramatically reshaped its local online properties to combine content across platforms, resulting in major traffic growth over the past year…
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.”
Daily Deals Biz: A Race to Own Local, Not Coupons?
I think we may be witnessing a race to see who can capture the consumer on his own time and his own turf — and his preferred context — with content (and deals) of specific interest to him a few moments before he realizes he wanted it. The daily deals are just a foot in the door to the broader hyperlocal market. Whatever territory and mindshare the likes of Patch have, Goup-Social wants. All this will be chewed on in my panel session at the Street Fight Summit tomorrow, October 25, with Jonty Kelt, CEO of Group Commerce, Chad Billmyer, CEO of Dealbird, and Perry Evans, CEO of Closely.
How Will the “Check-in” Behavior Evolve?
Just as it began to wane, the attention paid to Foursquare as the darling of the geo-social world has reemerged in the wake of the app’s version 4.0.2 release. Two Foursquare execs were on hand to dive deeper into the update during the recent Street Fight Summit in New York…