Street Fight Daily: Google Invests In Reviews, Foursquare’s Co-Founder Opens Up
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Google Launches City Experts Program To Encourage Higher Quality Google+ Local Reviews (TechCrunch)… Foursquare Cofounder Naveen Selvaduri Opens Up About His Exit: “I Wanted To Stay” (Fast Company)… Investors May Yet Cry For Yelp (Wall Street Journal)…
Street Fight Daily: Google Tests Local News, Foursquare Sells Location Data
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Google Now and Google Glass Could Become Your Hyperlocal News Readers (Quartz)… Foursquare Selling Its Location Data Through Ad Targeting Firm Turn (AdAge)… OpenTable and the ‘Ecommercification’ of Local (Screenwerk)…
With Strong Earnings, Yelp Nears Profitability
The reviews site brought in $55 million in revenue during the quarter on a $878,000 loss, the closest the company has come to run-rate profitability since going public. The results come on the heels of a busy past few weeks for the company as it began to stake its position in a local market that’s increasingly shifting toward commerce technologies…
Street Fight Daily: OpenTable Tests Payments, New Life for EveryBlock
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… OpenTable Begins Testing Mobile Payments (New York Times)… Five Months After Everyblock Shuts Down, A Media Company Revives The Product (PBS Media Shift)…
Groupon’s Restaurant Reservation Service Goes Mobile (Mashable)…
Street Fight Daily: Google Revamps Zagat, Groupon Loses Mobile Chief
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… 
Google Unveils Revamped Zagat Website, Apps (TheNextWeb)… Groupon Loses Mobile Head David Katz (TechCrunch)… New Facebook for Business Hub Launches With Tips, Tools, Case Studies (SearchEngineWatch)…
Hyperlocal Industry Leaders to Gather in NYC on Oct. 24-25
Street Fight, the leading voice of the hyperlocal industry, will host its third annual Street Fight Summit in New York in October, bringing together decision makers and influencers from key areas of local marketing and commerce. Topics will focus on the most dynamic areas of hyperlocal, such as indoor targeting, mobile payments, hyperlocal advertising models, and local commerce strategies…
9 Strategies Merchants Can Use to Protect Their Reputations Online
It’s not uncommon for local merchants to go to the extreme to make a great first impression when customers arrive at their businesses — designing custom signage and selecting window displays with the utmost care — without giving a second thought to the first thing potential customers see when they search for their companies online. Here are strategies that merchants can use to protect their reputations and make a great first impression on the web…
Openings & New Hires at Yellowbot, LiveIntent, Village Voice, and Groupon
Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. Moves this edition include new execs at Punchey and Tribune, and job openings at Yelp, The Weather Channel, Google, and more…
Street Fight Daily: Saving Online For Offline, Tablet Owners Stay Put
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… A Big Challenge For Retail: Turning Online “Saves” Into Offline Purchases (GigaOm)… Why Bother With Wireless? Tablet Owners Stay Tethered (AllThingsD)… Unlocking The Secret To Yelp’s Global Expansion With A Stop In Istanbul (Forbes)…
Case Study: For NYC Nightlife Group, Adding Restrictions Increases Deal Profitability
As the marketing director for The Lure Group, Kelly Bruce isn’t afraid to try new digital platforms on for size. Over the years, she’s worked with dozens of hyperlocal vendors, including Foursquare, Yelp, Gilt City, Grouper, Scoutmob, and HowAboutWe. “We’re doing all these different experience packages to bring in a new audience who might not be familiar with the venues,” said Bruce. “Every couple of weeks, we reach new people.”
Yelp Presses Into Commerce With New Local Delivery Product
Yelp launched a new product Tuesday that will allow customers to order food from participating merchants directly through its site or its mobile app. The move marks a seminal point in the company’s history, as the local discovery firm transitions from an information provider to an integrated local commerce service…
Which Hyperlocal Startup Will Be Next to IPO?
“[The markets] are probably as, or in many cases, more open to [hyperlocal companies] today, largely because they’re seeing some early success in other models,” said First Analysis’ Todd Van Fleet. “They know it can be done; it’s just a question of having the right model. Whereas Groupon may have created a disconcerting tone across the space, you have had the success of Angie’s List, Yelp and even mobile payments players like Square prove that a portion of the [local business marketplace] can be won.”
Street Fight Daily: Massive Layoffs at CityGrid, FTC Expands Regulations On Location Data
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… IAC’s CityGrid, Parent Of CitySearch And Urbanspoon, Lays Off Two-Thirds Of Staff, As Local Ad Push Bites(TechCrunch)… FTC Updates COPPA With New Restrictions On Location Data (AdExchanger)… Is Yelp A Bully Or Just Misunderstood? (BuzzFeed)…
Street Fight Daily: Clinkle Raises $25M, Square Poaches AdSense ‘Godfather’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Silicon Valley Luminaries Bet on Clinkle, a Payments Start-Up (TechCrunch)… Square Poaches Facebook’s Lead Ad Engineer Gokul Rajaram (AdAge)… Cramer: Macy’s Hyper-Local Strategy to Drive Sales (CNBC)…
The Good and Bad of Local Discovery on Our Summer Road Trip
Greetings from a summer road trip in the Pacific Northwest. Amid games of twenty questions and alphabet animals, we have faced the typical needs of the traveler: shelter, food, gas, and fun. Naturally, we’ve turned to local search, just like the other 31% of leisure travelers (up from 18% in 2010). I’ve written mainly about local search on the homefront and travel is another kind of use case entirely, one that in many ways has been “solved” by existing services — but has it? In our experience, you often have to be creative to get what you need…
Street Fight Daily: FTC Reviews Waze Deal, Twitter Developing Hyperlocal Ads
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Google Confirms Antitrust Review of Waze Deal(Wall Street Journal)… Twitter is Developing Geo-Targeted Ads for Retailers (AdAge)… Paton: ‘Bad CEOs and Worse Editors’ Are Trying To ‘Kill Our Future’()…
Openings & New Hires at Square, Patch, LocalVox, Facebook and More
Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. Moves this edition include the closing of LivingSocial’s office in Seattle, a and exiting CTO at AOL’s Patch, and job openings at Yelp, Appstack, Google, and more.
How Local Search Looks to the Rest of Us
It seems like many recent conversations, webinars, articles, and studies have pointed to the same conclusion: local search as an industry is insufficiently aware of how its products are actually used by consumers and small businesses. Many of the solutions put forward by consumer-facing local publishers and by business-facing services overestimate our appetite for new products and the amount of time and energy we want to spend using online tools…