Street Fight Daily: Facebook Reaches 1M Advertisers, Waze Deal May Invite Scrunity
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Facebook Reaches 1 Million Active Advertisers As Small Businesses Adopt (Reuters)… Google’s Effort to Skirt Regulation May Invite More Scrutiny (New York Times)… Groupon Pivots Amid Management Upheaval, Lagging Stock Price (AdAge)…
ReachLocal CEO: Commerce Solutions Becoming Alternatives to Local Search
Whereas most companies have built either a consumer-brand or a back-end for merchants, the company has spun out a SaaS tool, ReachCommerce, from its branded ClubLocal platform. Street Fight recently caught up with Zorik Gordon, ReachLocal’s chief executive, to talk about the origins of the new project, the challenges with bring local services online, and the impact a shift from advertising to commerce might have on local search companies like Yelp…
A Year After Big Scores by SinglePlatform and Yext, Locu Makes a Quiet Push
It’s been nearly a year since Yext announced a massive round of funding and SinglePlatform sold to Constant Contact within a week each other, and the value proposition for a real-time data and content network continues gain steam. As both firms put that capital to use, a third company, Locu, is trying to carve out its own share of the market with a similar model and sizable — albeit smaller — stack of cash…
Street Fight Daily: Apple Moves iOS Into Car, Yelp Revamps Nearby
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Apple Announces ‘iOS in the Car,’ Offers Access to Maps, Messages, and More (Verge)… Just like Foursquare, Yelp Now Recommending Nearby Places (CNet)… Mobile Companies Crave Maps That Live and Breath With Data (New York Times)…
Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Talks ‘Localization,’ Smartphone Adoption Reaches Majority
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Checking Into Foursquare? Yahoo’s CFO Talks About Next Mobile M&A — Including Importance of “Localization.” (AllThingsD)… Pew: 61 Percent In US Now Have Smartphones (MarketingLand)… Yelp Eyes Shopping On Site (SocialTimes)…
Yelp VP Ghaffary: 2.5 Trillion in Commerce Will Remain Offline
Contrary to Marc Andreessen’s recent claim, offline retail is not going to die, said Mike Ghaffary, VP at Yelp, during the morning keynote at Street Fight Summit West in San Francisco Tuesday. Ghaffary argued that the majority of the over $3 trillion in commerce will stay offline — and subsequently, the largest opportunity isn’t in bringing commerce online, but in using the web to support it offline…
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Open to Graph Search, Foursquare’s Flaw
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Yelp Open to Partnering With Facebook’s Rival Offering (Reuters)… Foursquare Is Generating Too Much Useless Noise (AdAge)… Nesta Research: Public Interest High, Advertiser Interest Low for Hyperlocal Media (London School of Economics)…
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Fires Back, Walmart Banks on Mobile In-Store
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Yelp Fires Back at Small Business Extortion Claims, Says It’s Not, and ‘Never has Been’, true (TheNextWeb)… Walmart Exec: Mobile Can Revive Personal Touch for Shoppers(CNet)… Square Expands into Asia With Japan Launch (AllThingsD)…
Street Fight Daily: Phone Firms Sell Data, A Day in Court for Yelp
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Phone Firms Sell Data on Customers (Wall Street Journal)… Another Day in Court for Yelp (New York Times)… Hyper-Local: Not A Behavioral Disease (Medium)…
VP Ghaffary: Yelp Is the ‘Local Layer’ of the Internet
Mike Ghaffary, a grad school friend of CEO Jeremy Stoppelman who helped to write one of Yelp’s first advertiser contracts, now serves as the company’s vice president of business development (and will give a keynote address at Street Fight Summit West in San Francisco next month). Street Fight caught up with Ghaffary recently to discuss the relationship between content and data in local discovery, and why competitors will have a hard time “killing Yelp.”
Street Fight Daily: Google Unveils New Maps, PayPal Takes Aim at Square
Street Fight Daily: Google Maps to Get Overhaul, PlaceIQ Raises $6.75M
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Google Maps To Get A Major Design Overhaul (SearchEngineLand)… PlaceIQ Raises $6.75 Million To Serve You Ads Based On Your Location (PlaceIQ)… Yelp and the Wisdom of “The Lonely Crowd” (The New Yorker)…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Adds Yext Data, DexOne Emerges from Bankruptcy
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Facebook to Add Yext’s Business Data as It Touts Search Feature (Bloomberg Businessweek)… Dex, SuperMedia Close Merger and Emerge from Chapter 11 As Dex Media (Screenwerk)… Google Calls Reports that Google Now for iOS Srains Batteries “Incorrect” (TheNextWeb)…
Street Fight Daily: Twitter Brings Local Trends to Mobile, Square Poaches PayPal Exec
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Twitter Updates Its Apps with New Trends Locations (TheNextWeb)… Square Hires An Exec From PayPal To Form Payments Partnerships With Retailers (TechCrunch)… Brownstoner Founder Jonathan Butler’s Venture-ing into Queens (Daily News)…
Yelp Finds Antidote to Mobile Burn in Bundled Inventory
Shares of Yelp rose 10% in after hours trading Wednesday evening after the company reported strong top-line growth in Q1 2013. The reviews site grew its revenue by 67% year-over-year to $46.1 million in Q1, cutting its net loss in half to $4.8 million from $9.8 million a year earlier. The bump came on the back of a 81% jump revenue from local businesses as well as successful monetization efforts in nascent international markets.
As Tide Turns, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley Responds to Critics
The technology community seems to have turned on Foursquare in recent months, with some people publicly deriding the once-adored company. Dennis Crowley, the company’s founder, responded to criticism Monday morning, asserting that Foursquare is in the process of “basically reinventing local search.”
How Does Yelp Make Money and Where Is It Going Next?
Yelp combines the nimble and engineering-driven product focus of a Foursquare or Facebook, with the direct SMB sales of a YP. It’s a powerful combo that few companies have, and few people talk about in blogospheric proclamations of category killers…