Street Fight Daily: 11.09.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Yelp Hires Goldman and Citigroup to Lead I.P.O. (NYT/Dealbook)
Yelp, the online reviews site for local businesses, has hired Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to lead its initial public offering of stock, which is expected to value the company at $1.5 billion to $2 billion…
CrowdMob Builds a Tapjoy+Groupon for Distributing Local Deals (GigaOm)
The company offers merchants and retailers a way to distribute their local deals through third-party apps, incentivizing mobile users to buy a deal in exchange for virtual currency or goods…
Street Fight Daily: 11.08.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Daily-Deal Sites Face Problems Ahead, Report Says (Wall Street Journal)
Forrester Research e-commerce analyst Sucharita Mulpuru says in report that the deal sites face challenges that threaten to slow down, if not end their businesses…
Starbucks Taps China’s Foursquare for Holiday Check-in Campaign (Ad Age)
While Foursquare slowly experiments with near-field communication technologies here in the U.S., one of its Chinese lookalikes is rolling out a massive NFC-powered campaign in Eastern China…
Street Fight Daily: 10.31.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Gilt City Picks Up BuyWithMe at a Discount (AllThingsD)
The daily deals site operated by fashion and luxury online retailer Gilt Groupe, has acquired daily deals company BuyWithMe. Gilt will be purchasing BuyWithMe’s assets, including its member and vendor lists, as well as some of its technology…
Cachet, Not Cash Fuels NYT’s Local Team-Ups (NetNewsCheck)
The New York Times’ local partnerships with the Bay Citizen, the Texas Tribune and the Chicago News Cooperative have been a boon to the legitimacy nonprofit sites and their missions to raise the level of local journalism in their markets. But some acknowledge that weighing the Times’ needs against their own can be a challenge…
Yelp Helps Local Restaurants Beat the Big Chains
Street Fight Daily: 10.13.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
The next update to Foursquare’s iPhone app includes a new feature called Radar, which pulls suggestions from the app’s Explore feature. Depending on your location, it might suggest a nearby restaurant, or remind you that the coffee shop on your to-do list is nearby. It will also tell you when your friends are meeting nearby. (TechCrunch)…
LocalResponse, a local marketing system that pushes targeted ads to users based on their check-ins, has raised $5 million. The money will go toward expanding the sales team and building out an enterprise version of the service for brands and agencies. (GigaOm)…
What Bad News Means for the Future of Daily Deals
The fact that sending a mass email to lots of random people advertising a random business may damage said business’ reputation is not entirely surprising. But this news really speaks to group buying 1.0, not where the industry is going. And that future will be far more interesting with differentiated, personalized, time-specific and behavior inducing offers…
Street Fight Daily: 09.22.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups…
LivingSocial may raise more than $200 million in funding that would give it a valuation of as much as $6 billion, rather than proceeding toward an initial public offering. (Bloomberg)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.14.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Groupon’s Chinese joint venture Gaopeng is not doing so well. It has apparently closed 10 offices and fired at as many as 400 employees over the past three months. (ReadWriteWeb)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.12.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Patch is looking for adolescent contributors from high schools — and even middle schools — as it seeks to recruit thousands of community bloggers. (Forbes)…
Street Fight Daily: 09.02.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
The Washington Post has decided to let the leases lapse on all but two of its local bureaus. Beginning next year, the Post has decided to end the leases on four offices in Virginia and three offices in Maryland. (Politico)…
What Motivates Yelp’s Power Users?
In an effort to dig a little deeper into what motivates Elite Squad-ers and other active Yelp users — beyond the free beer and crudités — Street Fight spoke with three power users who approach the service with differing goals in mind, but all of whom view Yelp as an integral part of their decision-making process.
Street Fight Daily: 08.31.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
A little over a year after Gannett and Yahoo teamed up on local ads sales primarily for the publisher’s 81 community newspapers, the two are extending their partnership to include all of Gannett’s 19 local TV stations. (PaidContent)…
Street Fight Daily: 08.30.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
By 2015, small and medium-sized businesses will spend only 30% of their marketing budgets on traditional media with the rest going to digital and online media, according to BIA/Kelsey. (NetNewsCheck)…
Case Study: A Deal Company’s Power Is in the Size of Its Mailing List
Savvy Cellar Wines owner Brent Harrison has an email subscriber list with more than 3,500 addresses, a Facebook page with more than 2,200 fans, and a Twitter feed with more than 500 followers. Still, the Mountain View, California, entrepreneur says getting the word out about his small business is the No. 1 reason he runs daily deals on a regular basis…
Local Merchant Reviews: Problem and Opportunity
The more I dig into the local listings and ratings business, the more evidence I see that that the information they provide is so easily rigged or faked, there’s no way I can trust them. It spotlights a hazard that review sites are failing to address—and an opportunity they’re missing.
Street Fight Daily: 07.29.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Are targeted local deals services cutting news organizations out of the market that used to keep them afloat, just like Craigslist did to their classifieds? (ReadWriteWeb)…
Street Fight Daily: 07.25.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
OpenTable, the restaurant reservation Web site, will offer 30 percent off some dinner reservations through a new partnership with Savored, a start-up that offers daily deals for high-end restaurants. (New York Times/Bits)…
Street Fight Daily: 07.20.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
When it comes to national distribution, the majority of daily deals sites are in less than 10 big markets. Just under 20 percent of daily deals players are in a single market, while 69 percent of sites are in between 2 and 9 markets, (TechCrunch)…
Street Fight Daily: 07.18.11
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...
Connecticut law-enforcement officials are looking into whether Groupon is breaking consumer-protection laws that prohibit gift cards from expiring. (Wall Street Journal)…
Yelp: Going Mobile
Yelp is wisely leveraging one of its major strengths–its mobile popularity–to get up in Groupon’s grill. Yelp users regularly use its mobile features to decide where to eat, drink and shop when they’re out and about. Now they get instant info on nearby Yelp Deals as well, which should help boost sales and give the company more leverage with its local vendors…