Street Fight Daily: PayPal Nabs Uber Deal, Facebook Revises SMB Count
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… PayPal Nabs Uber Partnership in Pursuit of Mobile Marketplaces (Bloomberg Businessweek)… Facebook Expands Its Definition Of Small Business Pages, Says It Now Has 25M Of Them (TechCrunch)… Digital First Media Will Add Paywalls At Most Of Its Daily Newspapers (GigaOm)…
Conference Notebook: Taking Uber Beyond Taxis, Kittens and Ice Cream
Don’t worry OpenTable. Uber isn’t going to start booking tables — at least, not yet. During an interview at the Business Insider Ignition Conference in New York on Thursday, the company’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, ruled out markets like hotels and restaurant reservations that do not involve delivery as potential areas of expansion for the on-demand service while hinting at a future beyond the taxi industry…
Handybook Co-Founder: The Key To Scaling Local Is Great Service
Mobile bookings services are on the rise as consumers look to use their smartphones to do more than find information about local businesses. Enter Handybook, a New York-based technology company that allows users to book household services on its site and app. Street Fight recently spoke with Umang Dua, Handybook’s co-founder, to find out more about the consumer services space and Handybook’s plans to impact the way customers book household services…
Street Fight Daily: NextDoor Raises $60 Million, First Data Acquires Perka
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Nextdoor Raises $60 million In Funding To Bring Neighbors Together (GigaOm)… First Data Acquires Cardless Customer Loyalty Startup Perka (AllThingsD)… Yelp Loss Widens, With Costs Eclipsing Revenue (Wall Street Journal)…
Street Fight Daily: Uber’s Regulator Fight Continues, Google’s New Take On Self-Service
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Why Is Uber Fighting a Regulatory Battle That It Already Won? (AllThingsD)… Google Updates Its Self-Service Offers Tool (TheNextWeb)… Square’s Credit Card Payments Are Great, But Here’s What The Company Actually Does Best (Business Insider)…
Why It’s So Hard to Create Marketplaces for Local Commerce
Recognizing the success of Uber, startups and incumbents alike rushed to replicate the company’s model in other verticals, developing new products to help business and consumers buy and sell local services like car repair, house cleaning, and haircuts. MyTime, the 9-month old project launched by RedBeacon founder Ethan Anderson, is one of these and is staying the course. When I spoke with Anderson last week, he outlined a few key strategic decisions and clever hacks, which have helped the company get some early traction for its marketplace..
Street Fight Daily: Uber Looks Beyond Taxis, Foursquare Launches Self-Serve Product
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… On-Demand Everything? Uber Might Steer In A New Direction (CNet)… Foursquare Launches Self-Serve Promoted Listings For Small Businesses (MarketingLand)… Shopkick Adds In-App Purchases To Help Retailers Fight Amazon: ‘We Are The Anti-Amazon Coalition’ (TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: SoLoMo Hype Wanes, Groupon Makes Another Goods Buy
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.
Startups Adjust to Web’s Down Cycle (Wall Street Journal)… Groupon Buys CommerceInterface To Improve How Vendors Sell On Groupon Goods (TechCrunch… Why Malls Are Getting Mauled (AllThingsD)…
How E-hail Apps Like Uber Could Impact the Hyperlocal Ecosystem
It’s entirely conceivable that fast-growing ranks of Uber users would not be averse to other commerce offerings that could be paid for through the phone app. In fact, these users are probably even more used to the idea of paying over the phone than people who use Google Wallet or Apple’s Passbook, neither of which has achieved wide adoption or even viral growth…
Street Fight Daily: Apple Exec Exits Over Maps, Village Voice Sues Yelp
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… An Apple Exit Over Maps (Wall Street Journal)… Village Voice Sues Yelp for Using “Best of” (PaidContent)… Could Sandy be Instagram’s Big Citizen Journalism Moment? (Pando Daily)…
Uber’s Ice Cream Stunt and the Future of Get-It-Now Local Commerce
With instant delivery, the local advertising market comes alive all of a sudden. Because now huge chunks of commerce where Amazon has stomped out mom-and-pops now becomes viable again because, at least for now — Amazon can’t get it to you same day, if you ab-fab-gotta-have-it-now-now-now. This trickles down into new reasons for mom-and-pops to, you guessed it, advertise online…
Text Me an Open Table
Another true story. I was meeting an old family friend for dinner in downtown San Francisco. I had told him to meet me at ZeroZero, a very popular newish Italian joint with killer pizzas and a reasonable menu. We get there and I ask the hostess how long the wait for a table. She smiles sweetly: “One hour.” Well that won’t do. Oh, by the way. The family friend? Works at Uber, a private car-on-demand company, as a business development guy. He’s newish to San Francisco and doesn’t know where else to go to eat. I’m likewise not that savvy on the Moscone Center locale and also was “budgetarily constrained.”…
The Uber-ization of Local Commerce
Last week, ReachLocal took its new commerce platform for home services, ClubLocal, off of its training wheels, expanding the program into the Bay Area. Pitched as an Uber for home services, the company aims to create a self-service platform to facilitate the booking of home repairs and plumbers — but its execution overlooks some of the dynamics that make some industries, like taxicabs, more fitting to the model than others…