CEO Josh Williams Explains Gowalla’s Overhaul
Last Thursday, Gowalla released a much-anticipated revamp of its location-based application, capping off a blockbuster summer for the geo-social space. The company’s CEO Josh Williams announced the redesign in early September, citing a return to Gowalla’s fundamental mission of encouraging people “to go out and explore.” The driving force behind the Austin-based company’s renaissance appears to be elsewhere — less an ideological about-face and more, an extensive retrofitting aimed at making Gowalla a potentially profitable company….
#SFS11 Company Profile: Urbantag
The local review and recommendation space is in need of some tidying up. User-generated reviews on sites like Yelp fail to incorporate taste, and often are littered with disingenuous reviews created by the merchants themselves. Meanwhile, recommendation engines like Bizzy and Foursquare Explore require users to share their location on a geo-social network — an activity that remains uncommon in the general public. Urbantag wants to help solve the problem…
Sonar CEO: ‘Location Is Reaching an Inflection Point’
“We spent the last five years uploading our lives to the Internet – our likes, preferences, activities and so on,” says Brett Martin. “Now, we are downloading that information and spreading it over the suitable world. So there is a gold rush of applications which are working to help navigate that data in a physical context.”
Loopt CEO: Turning the Deal Around
When Loopt introduced its new U-Deals program earlier this year, our guest columnist, Doug Stephens hailed the concept as a “profound” shift in the consumer dynamic. Street Fight recently caught up with Loopt’s founder and CEO Sam Altman to talk about U-Deals, location privacy, and where he sees location-based services headed.
Foursquare’s Merchant API Lays Groundwork for Monetization
Amid the fanfare over Foursquare’s new features, the July release and August update of the company’s Merchant API went largely unnoticed. Eric Friedman, Foursquare’s director of business development, talks about why the offering marks a big step toward improving merchant services and laying the groundwork for future monetization.
Managing the Data Infrastructure Behind Hyperlocal
As more and more location-based apps and services pop up, one of the major issues that developers at these companies face is the need for accurate, updated, geo-coded information about all of the businesses out there. Data provider Factual is kind of a clearinghouse for the data sets that these developers need…
Harnessing Geo-Location Data to Profile Places
PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall talks about how his company’s technology collates geo-location data sets to give profiles of specific places. By tracking and deciphering patterns of foot traffic, mobile searches, and even weather data, he says his company can give advertisers and merchants a deeper understanding of the opportunities around them.
Paycloud Brings Merchant Loyalty Cards to Your Phone
Earlier this month, Sparkbase launched its new mobile rewards application Paycloud, which allows small and medium-sized merchants to offer and track mobile loyalty programs to customers in the vicinity of their shop. The company’s CEO Doug Hardman talks about scaling local merchant acquisition and why the company’s recent move into the mobile wallet space may have a year or two headstart on the competition…
Street Fight Daily: 08.19.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Foursquare announced new features on Thursday that allow check-ins at events, like concerts or movies, instead of just the places where those events are happening. The company said the new features will simply formalize the existing behavior of its users. (New York Times)…
Groupon has not only faced questions about its controversial accounting practices, but is now also having to respond to questions from members of Congress about its privacy policies. (AllThingsD)…
Datasphere’s Cowan: Hitting the Hyperlocal ‘Sweet Spot’
Street Fight recently spoke with Gary Cowan, Datasphere’s SVP of product and marketing (who will be joining us at the Street Fight Summit in October) about the company’s content strategy, the future of the banner ad, and why his company’s sites aren’t “cookie cutter.”
Using Geofence Data to Understand Local Consumers
With all of the locational data being logged these days, it’s becoming more and more important to have ways to contextualize and understand it all. While this kind of analysis obviously is very important in government, military and non-business environments, it is also highly relevant for merchants and advertisers focusing on hyperlocal targeting and campaign assessment…
LocalUp: Building Online Ordering Hubs for Restaurateurs
LocalUp Solutions, a platform provider for online restaurant advertising and food ordering, has licensees and company-supported account managers in 30 markets around the country. The company provides groups of restaurants in small cities with an aggregated online presence and ordering capability that expands their marketing footprint.. .
Using LBS to Help Merchants Manage Inventory
As mobile becomes a more and more important element in the daily deals equation, it’s becoming clear that there are more potential elements to a location-based deal than your classic Groupon — and more ways for merchants to optimize those deals. Location-based deals platform ThinkNear is one such response to the challenge and opportunity presented by mobile…
Gilt City’s Richardson: Aiming Offers at the Local Elite
Most online ventures aimed at local markets tend to cast a wide net — targeting content or offers to a wide swath of consumers based solely on their location, and pulling sponsors and advertisers from local merchants. Gilt City, the localized offers arm of Gilt Groupe, has taken another route, targeting only the very wealthiest consumers in a handful of around the country with pricey-and-luxurious member offers and and events (featuring brands that aren’t necessarily local in nature)…
Placecast President: Increasing Relevance With Location-Aware Ads
Placecast is a location-based mobile ad company that uses “geo-fencing” to help brands extend offers to consumers in the vicinity of their store. The company says it “has pioneered the first fully integrated platform solution for device manufacturers, local directory companies, and mobile operators to easily integrate and monetize location-based information from virtually any source.”
Boston.com Experiments in the Deals Space
In late May, Boston.com launched Boston Deals, becoming the latest in a long line of online publishers venturing into the white-hot daily deals space. Street Fight caught up with Boston.com’s executive director of digital advertising, Mike Wallace, to talk about how publishers can build their brands through ecommerce, and the implications of these kinds of projects for the future of digital advertising…