Tag: Local

The Daily Deals Industry in 2011

The daily deals industry is an exciting space to watch right now, as evidenced by Google’s recent $6 Billion offer to buy Groupon, Amazon’s $175 million investment in LivingSoical, Facebook’s recent launch of Facebook Deals, and all of the other competitors looking for a piece of the pie coming out of the woodwork.

We had a conversation with Jere Doyle, President and CEO of Eversave, a company in this space that has been in business since 1999. He shared his thoughts on the current state of the industry and where it is headed. "There will be a natural consolidation in the industry over the next year or so, and winners will emerge," he said. "The winners will be those players who not only help local business with customer acquisition, but also help them build longer term relationships with customers."

Google and Groupon

Doyle would not offer much in the way of comment on Groupon turning down Google’s offer (he also did not say whether or not Eversave would’ve turned down the offer). "It’s hard to say and I don’t like to speculate on what Google or any of the players in this space will do. The growth is incredibly rapid with new sites launching and new industry developments every day," said Doyle. "Based on what transpired in the past few weeks, it’s clear that Google wants a place at the daily deal table. We’ll just have to wait and see how they get there."

Facebook

"Facebook is another phenomenal social media success and could be a huge player if they figure out how to build social shopping into the Facebook experience," Doyle added. "So far Facebook is still in the early stages of figuring that out. Their recently announced Facebook Deals platform has all of the key elements – mobile, social sharing, location-based search and targeting."

But one challenge, he noted, is that Facebook’s is a do-it-yourself platform. "Merchants have to conduct the campaigns themselves," he explained. "And they also have to have an established Facebook following or invest time in building a following if they don’t already have a strong Facebook presence. One thing we’ve learned is that the smaller merchants and business owners who run deals with Eversave don’t have a lot of time to think about planning and executing marketing campaigns, let alone building a strong email list."

Amazon and LivingSocial

Doyle wouldn’t comment much on Amazon’s investment in LivingSocial, but clearly sees it as a very significant move for the industry as a whole. "Amazon’s investment in Living Social – like the Google/Groupon speculations, Facebook’s entry into the market, Wal-Mart deals, eBay and PayPal, you name it – all of these developments validate the daily deal market space," Doyle said. "It’s too early to tell where it will all end up, but there’s no denying the opportunities for providers, merchants and consumers who can benefit from incredible savings."

Each Player For Itself

"Each player is trying to find the best approach to stay ahead and keep innovating," he added. "Acquisitions and funding are two approaches. In Eversave’s case, we’ve been in this business since 1999 and don’t currently rely on funding to expand and innovate our online couponing and daily deal offerings."

"There’s plenty of room for multiple players in this space, but there’s bound to be a shakeout at some point," Doyle reiterated. "The successful daily deal sites will be the ones that are able to juggle and balance what at times seem to be cross purposes. For example, you need to have geographical reach and a growing membership base of consumers, but you also need to make sure you maintain a quality database. Ultimately, it comes down to quality, not just quantity. The surviving daily deal providers must also offer something unique – for example, on the consumer side appealing to niche markets. Eversave’s database has a strong emphasis on targeting females 25-54 years of age. This demographic is the purchasing engine for U.S. households."

"Right now there is a flood of new providers launching, and I expect the excitement about Google’s offer and Amazon’s funding of Living Social will spur on the daily deal gold rush. But the idea that this type of business is easy to launch, build and sustain success is a big mistake," he warned. "It’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination, and those rushing in looking to turn a quick sale and make obscene amounts of money after only a few months are mistaken."

Doyle claims that Eversave’s traffic puts it in the top three daily deal providers. It currently operates locally in over ten cities, but Doyle says it’s already everywhere with more local launches planned for 2011.

Related: Groupon: We’re the Savior for Small Businesses

December 17, 2010
Yahoo Tests New Local Site for Mobile Users

Yahoo has launched the new Yahoo Local for Mobile experience in beta.

"At Yahoo!, we’re all about harnessing the massive power of the web and the ever-expanding capabilities of connected devices to create engaging and personally relevant mobile experiences for our users," says Irv Henderson, VP of Product Management for Yahoo Mobile and Connected Devices. "But we also know that sometimes, even when you have the world at your fingertips, it’s what’s right outside your door that matters to you most."

"With rich, hyper-local content, Yahoo! Local offers a uniquely personalized experience via the mobile web on iPhone and Android, enabling you to discover the best local news, deals, and events in your neck of the woods, all in one place," adds Henderson.

Content includes local news and information created by the community, local publishers, and Yahoo editors, as well as local blogs and newspapers.

"Our geo-informatics and content enrichment platforms identify and geo-tag every news story that appears on every page down to the neighborhood level," says Henderson.

Yahoo has also integrated the Local Offers program it recently announced, which the company is partnering with local offer providers on to build what the company hopes is "one of the largest and most comprehensive repositories of local offers on the Internet."

The new Yahoo Local for Mobile is being tested in 30+ neighborhoods and cities around the U.S. These include: San Francisco, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Brooklyn, NY as well as Birmingham, Ferndale, and Royal Oak in Michigan.

December 8, 2010
Did Groupon Make the Right Decision? What’s Google’s Next Move?

As you probably know, Groupon recently turned down Google’s $6 billion acquisition offer. CEO Andrew Mason was reportedly concerned about the direction Google may have taken it in, as well as what would happen to its employees.

A lot of people are surprised that Groupon turned the offer down, as it would’ve been Google’s biggest acquisition to date. Groupon is doing pretty well so far though, and is clearly confident that it can remain a leader in the space down the road. The company is bringing in $800 Million in annual revenue according to the latest reported numbers.

Did Groupon Make the Right Decision? Share your thoughts.

Can Groupon remain a leader in this space though? It pioneered an interesting new take on online offers, but many imitators quickly began coming out of the woodwork. None have made anywhere near the mark Groupon has on the industry so far, but that doesn’t mean they won’t eventually.

In fact, just today a partnership between NimbleCommerce and Adility was announced. "The group buying market has three core elements: platform, publishers and deals," a spokesperson for NimbleCommerce tells WebProNews. "Some companies, like newspapers for instance, are their own publishers and may have their own advertisers. All they need is the technology. Enter: NimbleCommerce, which powers OpenTable, ValPak, YellowPages.com, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Philly.com, AnnArbor.com, and others. Other major web properties are their own publishers but may not have a sales team to source the ‘daily deals’– Enter: Adility which offers thousands of daily deals."

A report from Experian Hitwise last week showed that Groupon is doing substantially better in market share than its closest-competitor LivingSocial. However, LivingSocial just got a nice chunk of change from Amazon – the web’s largest retailer. That could be huge. LivingSocial CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy has even been quoted as saying flat out that the company will use Amazon’s investment to overtake Groupon in market share.

Apart from that, Facebook, which has over half a billion users, recently launched Facebook Deals, which could also make a substantial impact in the space. And of course there’s Google.

Google clearly sees value in what Groupon does. A lot of value. What’s their next move going to be? Will they acquire one of Groupon’s competitors? Will they just start their own Groupon-like service? The company is already placing a great deal of emphasis on local, and has a huge advantage with its local search results, in terms of getting deals seen by potential customers.

"Groupon has cracked the code for getting local businesses to spend marketing dollars online," writes TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld. "And increasingly, those businesses are going to choose between spending those dollars on Groupon versus on Google."

"You might not think of Groupon as an advertising company, but the way most merchants rationalize offering such deeply discounted deals (typically 30 to 50 percent off) is they treat it as a marketing expense," he adds. "It is a proven way to get new people into their stores, spas and restaurants. Maybe they lose money that first visit, but it is the cost to gain a new customer. Those dollars come out of their marketing budgets, which are often tight."

Google will not just give up in this space. That doesn’t mean it will be successful in displacing Groupon as the market leader in local deals. Google’s still trying to figure out its social media strategy, which could end up being a key factor in its offerings in this space.

Unlike social media, however, Google is already considered a go-to place in local. It may have more luck here.

How do you think Google should proceed in this space? Share your thoughts.

December 8, 2010
Google SVP Labels Local Ad Market Her “Biggest Focus”

Susan Wojcicki is often credited with creating AdSense, and for years, she’s been in charge of all Google’s advertising products. A significant shift may be occurring within the company, then, as Wojcicki recently said that the local advertising market now receives most of her attention.

Wojcicki told Spencer Ante yesterday, "That is my biggest focus." Which means a significant number of Googlers have probably been assigned to the subject, since Wojcicki was named a senior vice president in October. (Only eight other people hold that title at Google.)

Wojcicki also said, "How can we enable you, when you’re walking around, to find out the best local offers around? As an advertiser, how can I find out if someone saw my ad and went to a store? The local market is a huge market, we’ve always wanted to be in it."

As a result, Google may make some acquisitions in order to advance its expertise in this area. Or it might reach out to small business owners more than ever in an attempt to win their cooperation.

We should point out that former vice president of search products and user experience Marissa Mayer was recently asked to supervise Google’s products and services related to local markets and geolocation, further emphasizing the company’s focus on this field.

December 8, 2010
Bing Adds Shopping Mall Maps to Local Results

Bing is now including Bing shopping mall directory maps in Bing Maps.

"Have you ever driven to a mall, parked at one of the big department stores, then discovered the store you needed to go to was on the other side of the mall? What about experiencing the frustration of not knowing where in the mall is the store you need and the mall directory is nowhere in sight? And with malls being extra busy now that we’re in holiday season, we’ll take anything we can get to help us get in, get out, and avoid the crowds," said Bing Maps Product Manager Brian Hendricks.

"You can use these mall maps to figure out where the right place to park is and map out your mall excursion so you don’t spend precious time walking around," says Hendricks.

Users can find the mall maps by clicking "Mall Map" within Bing Local results.

So far, Bing only has maps for malls in Seattle, Boston, and New York metro areas, but they will continue add more regularly.

December 7, 2010
Google Talks Local Search Relevance Factors

Google is placing a great deal of emphasis on local in its search results these days. In fact in many cases, it would appear to significantly reduce the importance of ranking in the regular organic results.

Google talked a little about how local search ranking works today in a blog post on its Lat Long Blog, which included the below video of Google Product Manager Jeremy Sussman discussing the basics.

"Say you’re in Union Square in New York City, and you want to find a nearby coffee shop, so you go to Google and type in ‘coffee shops in Union Square, NYC’. You’ll find a list of just what you typed in – local coffee shops near Union Square with all the basic information you would expect to find, such as name, address, and phone number, and if they exist, you’ll also find reviews, ratings, and links to other relevant resources," he explains. "These organic listings are free to both the user and the business. We give you the best results we can find."

"Now, there are a variety of relevance factors Google uses to match or answer your search query, in this case, locating coffee shops near Union Square. Three of the key factors are: relevance, prominence, and distance," he continues. "Relevance is showing you only coffee shops and not unrelated businesses such as retailers, dry cleaners, and so on. Prominence is determined by how well known or prominent certain coffee shops are, based on sources across the web. Distance is easy. We calculate how far each coffee shop is from Union Square. And if you don’t specify Union Square in your search, we’ll show you coffee shops based on your general location."

Google recently launched Hotp

ot, a social recommendation engine for local search. You can read more about that here. Hotpot listings can show up anywhere business listings show up in Google search results.

"Do the Hotpot ratings and review impact order and ranking of the local businesses you see on Google? Absolutely," says Sussman. "That’s the whole point…if you signed in to post ratings and reviews and to receive personalized recommendations in your search results. We do this to deliver more relevant search results and provide a more tailored experience based on your preferences."

In case you were wondering whether or not claiming a page will influence ranking, Sussman says, "A business claiming a Place Page does not result in preferential treatment. Of course more detailed information about your business helps us do a better job connecting people to the businesses they’re searching for."

Finally, he makes it clear that neither Tags nor Boost (a couple of Google’s local advertising options) influence local search ranking or where listings appear in Google or Google Maps results. Google does say, however, that the ranking of Boost ads in the ‘Ads’ section of the Google.com and Google Maps results pages is based on relevance and quality factors.

December 3, 2010
What Google Acquiring Groupon Would Mean For Both Companies

Update: Groupon has reportedly rejected Google’s offer.

Everybody’s waiting to find out if Google will really buy Groupon. We may find out very soon, as Groupon’s board is supposed to be meeting today to come up with an answer. Groupon is all about local, and that’s something Chris Tolles, CEO of local news powerhouse Topix knows a bit about. He offered some of his insights on a possible Google Groupon acquisition to WebProNews today.

First off, Tolles has some thoughts on Google’s larger local strategy. "This is the largest area of online advertising growth, and expansion here is one of the few areas that’s fragmented and still rife for disruption," Tolles tells us. "They are going to need to expand local sales efforts and staffing, as well as create products and partner for local inventory."

On why Google is looking to buy Groupon rather than build this type of product internally, Tolles says, "It’s pretty clear from the hundreds of unsuccessful Groupon clones that building one of these things is not as easy as all that."

"Plus, Groupon has a $600M local sales run rate," he adds. "It’s not obvious that Google is making that much from local advertisers. Plus, Google has always been about the algorithm and when they need to build outside of their core experience, they have done a great job in acquiring companies to help them in products like maps, Android, YouTube etc. While they’ve not succeeded in everything, they’re successes are pretty impressive."

Tolles says Google could help Groupon reduce its operating costs. "Groupon’s growth depends on their building out email lists, and they use Adwords from Google for a big portion of that," he explains. "Presumably getting the wholesale rate on that kind of advertising, or creating new ways of integrating Groupon signups into search results, Gmail or Places would be a potential huge economy of scale for Groupon to tap into."

There’s no question that Google could greatly help Groupon expand internationally, although the company has gradually been doing this on its own. "Groupon is going to have to expand internationally to continue the kind of growth that we’ve been seeing from them, and being able to leverage Google’s existing international infrastructure is a potentially game changing time to market advantage," says Tolles.

"While I’m sure Groupon could soldier into countries where they have no presence, having native speaking staff on the ground in as many companies as Google is operating in would be a big asset," he notes.

Google is doing all it can to own local and that will continue for the foreseeable future as long as Marissa Mayer is in charge no doubt. The company’s been doing some interesting things in the local space, from adding a great deal of emphasis on local to its regular search results, and introducing a social recommendation engine (Hotpot). All of that said, local is too large a space for any one company to dominate, according to Tolles.

"Local advertising is a $100B year business – 2/3 of the ad spending in the US," he says. "You’d have to control billboards, TV, radio, online, mobile and email lists to be able to ‘dominate local’. While I think Google is on a path to have a major part of that ecosystem, I don’t see them dominating local advertising anytime soon."

To me, there are clear advantages for Google if they acquire Groupon (particularly as it battles with Facebook, which recently encroached on Groupon’s model). Some think the acquisition would be a mistake on Google’s part, however. We’ll see what happens. We should find out soon whether it’s going to even go through or not.

Meanwhile, Groupon has been making acquisitions of its own. TechCrunch reports the company has acquired Ludic Labs, the local marketing services startup behind offerfoundry.com and diddit.com. The company has also acquired Asian sites uBuyiBuy, Beeconomic and Atlaspost. In addition to all of this, Groupon just announced some major features for local businesses.

Do you think Google should acquire Groupon? Share your thoughts in the comments.

December 3, 2010
Groupon Dominates LivingSocial In Market Share, But Now Amazon’s In The Equation

Update: Groupon has reportedly rejected Google’s offer.

There’s a reason why Google is going after Groupon as opposed to one of its competitors. Not only is it the leader in its space, it’s the leader in its space by a long shot. Experian Hitwise has shared some data comparing market share of visits of Group Coupon Sites, and Groupon is way ahead of its closest competitor, LivingSocial.

A Google acquisition could make Groupon’s market share skyrocket even more, though LivingSocial just got a nice infusion of cash from the biggest retailer on the web. LivingSocial announced a $175 Million Investment by Amazon, as well as an additional $8 million investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The company says it will use the investment to maintain a "steady drumbeat of worldwide launches and overall business growth". LivingSocial already has over 10 million subscribers in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, and Australia.

"To be the biggest player in the local commerce space there is no one better to work with than Amazon," said LivingSocial CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy. "As the social shopping space continues to heat up, LivingSocial is committed to staying focused on providing the high level of quality that consumers and merchants have come to expect when working with us."

Along with the above chart, Experian Hitwise shared the following information:

– Groupon.com received 79% of US visits last week and Living Social received 8% among a custom category of 81 Group Buying sites last week

– First, (the site) appeared in Spring of this year, that Living Social’s visit growth would make it a viable threat to Groupon. As the chart denotes, that growth-spurt was very short lived.

– Second, if we look at the graph’s end-point, Living Social’s market-share is almost an order of magnitude lower than Groupon’s.

– So one-tenth of $6 billion dollars (Groupon’s valuation) is less than Living Social’s projected valuation. Of course traffic to valuation is a gross over-simplification. Perhaps Living Social’s audience composition would validate a higher value.

– The main difference between the two audiences, is that Groupon has clearly "crossed the chasm" in Geoffrey Moore speak, with strong showings in types like Mosaic type C02 – Prime Middle America. Probably the most interesting difference is the percentage of Young Cosmopolitans – type H01 that are frequenting LivingSocial.

– From prior analysis we know that Young Cosmos are one [of] the strongest early adopter segments. Despite the very unimpressive traffic numbers, perhaps Amazon is recognizing the potential for LivingSocial to move beyond its current early adopter phase.

Both Groupon and LivingSocial will have plenty of competition to deal with moving forward as this space is getting incredibly hot. If Google buys Groupon, it will have a clear advantage over the rest, however (even more so than it already does), with Google’s new overall focus on local and social. Amazon is very powerful though, so that should be huge for LivingSocial.

December 3, 2010
Groupon Adds Big Features for Businesses, Would Fit Nicely with Google

Update: Groupon has reportedly rejected Google’s offer.

Groupon is been getting a lot of press since it launched, because it has become so popular in such a short amount of time. That press has been amped even more this week, as rumors of a possible acquisition by Google swirl throughout the tech web.

While Google was likely privy to this information as it made its offer, now other businesses have some interesting news from Groupon to sink their teeth into. The company announced new Groupon Stores and a Deals feed, which should be key to the future success of Groupon as competitors come out of the woodwork (including Facebook with its recently announced Deals).

Groupon Stores let businesses create and launch their own deals anytime they want. "Think of it as the online equivalent of a merchant’s physical storefront," explains CEO Andrew Mason.

Businesses can set up a free permanent presence on Groupon, create offers, submit deals to be promoted to Groupon subscribers through email and the new Deal Feed, and get customers to follow their store, from which businesses can send updates to followers (not unlike a Facebook Page). The email part is an added bonus over a Facebook Page.

Groupon subscribers can check the Deal Feed throughout the day to see new personalized deals, the featured daily deal, and those recommended by Groupon itself based on what it knows about you (more about Groupon personalization here).

"We originally designed Groupon to account for the constraints of being a small company. Since we didn’t have any merchant relationships, we limited ourselves to one deal per day," Mason says. "Today things are different – our biggest problem is that demand is so high, merchants often wait months to be featured. And while we once only had a few thousand customers per city, now we have hundreds of thousands (Chicago just added its millionth subscriber!) – making it increasingly difficult to find one deal that satisfies everyone."

"Personalization, Stores, and the Deal Feed are our attempt to re-imagine things," he adds. "How would we have built Groupon if we started with hundreds of thousands of relationships with the best merchants in the world, millions of customers, and a world-wide operation with thousands of people helping merchants create deals? With these new features, we can feature more merchants and deliver a more relevant experience for customers, while maintaining the curated, serendipitous and simple experience that’s at the core of Groupon."

Groupon’s new way of "re-imagining things" could be just what the doctor ordered for Google, should the rumored acquisition actually go through. The addition of Groupon to the Google roster would make one more key weapon in the company’s battle with Facebook, particularly now that Facebook has Deals. Groupon is the established leader in this space, and it’s really only beginning. The addition of the stores/deal feed would be an alternative to a Facebook Page for many businesses, and imagine that being integrated directly with Google’s local search (which is getting a great deal more emphasis in search results these days).

Google would likely also be able to help Groupon expand to more locations fairly quickly.

Groupon’s board is expected to meet today to decide how they’re going to proceed with Google, according to the Wall Street Journal. Many analysts expect the acquisition to be Google’s most expensive to date.

Groupon’s new features are only being tested in Chicago, Dallas, and Seattle so far, but the company says it will add cities and functionality soon. If Google buys it, I’d expect it just about everywhere.

December 1, 2010
Search and Social Media: Who Can You Trust?

The New York Times published a very interesting (and very long) article over the holiday break that raises a lot of questions about Google and search in general. I’ll let you read the 8-page story yourself if you want all the details, but what it boils down to is that Google doesn’t always point you to the best possible results.

Do you think Google’s results need improvement? Share your thoughts here.

Some of you probably don’t need an 8-page article to tell you that, but this story in particular paints a picture of a business that goes out of its way to treat customers poorly so that they’ll leave negative comments, which have (in the past) worked to boost its visibility on Google, as the search engine has given more focus to local businesses. It sounds crazy, but it has apparently worked, though since the story brought exposure to it, Google appears to have dropped the rankings in this instance. The point is that there is no telling how widespread this kind of thing is – not businesses intentionally treating customers poorly for search visibility (though I’m sure this one business isn’t the only one to engage in such behavior), but just Google giving undeserved visibility to businesses that get more bad reviews than good.

Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan, who was tapped as a source for the NYT piece, provides a great deal of further analysis on Google’s practices here.

"Having seen the crazy things that Google will rank high over time, it’s easy to become jaded and think ‘that’s the way it is,’ he writes. "Many SEOs I know feel this way and have largely given up assuming anything will change, or that Google will take the SEO view of its ranking problems seriously. Heck, Google still won’t let people look up all the backlinks leading to a site, which might allow outsiders to do a better job helping them police their results."

This is one of the key selling points of Blekko, the new search engine to the party, which both lets people look up said backlinks and relies on community to establish relevancy. See our interview with Blekko co-founder Rich Skrenta here:

More WebProNews Videos

"It’s all stuff that can be dismissed as ‘inside baseball’ and not what typical people care about," Sullivan added. "But typical people do care, do get puzzled…what Google ranks tops can have a terrible impact on real consumers."

This is true to some extent. If Google places the bad results over the good ones (and as Sullivan points out, Bing is no better at this than Google, and Bing provides results for Yahoo now), and consumers are duped into going with those results, it is those consumers who will pay the price.

Buyer Beware

However, it is ultimately the user’s responsibility to use their own judgment and do their homework before making any decisions or suffer the consequences. As Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine says, " The internet doesn’t nullify the First Law of Commerce: caveat emptor. When I had my now-legendary problems with Dell, I kicked myself for not doing a search of ‘dell sucks’ before buying my computer. That’s my responsibility as a shopper. And, as I pointed out at the time, Google would have given me the information I needed."

There’s something to be said for this kind of consumer investigating. The information is out there. It’s up to you how you go about getting it, which is why social media has become an important go-to channel for trusted results. You can just as easily get poor results from social media, but you define who your friends are and what their opinions mean to you.

Google and other search engines know this of course. It’s why Bing made a deal for Facebook results. In fact, it’s why Google recently launched a social recommendation engine (Hotpot) directly tied to local listings.

It’s not as if Google isn’t trying to overcome this problem. Google knows it’s not perfect. The problem with that recommendation engine is that it’s not where consumers’ friends already are. That’s why Facebook is such a key component to this whole thing, and that’s why Facebook in turn is a direct competitor to Google and why Google is trying desperately to build consumers’ social graphs on their own properties.

It’s Ultimately in Users’ Hands

If users want Google to be their way of finding trusted information, it’s in their interest to build their social graphs through Google. For Google’s part, it’s a matter of a. getting customers to realize that, and b. getting users to care that much about Google being the place where they get their info. There are plenty of people out there that would just as soon go elsewhere, and plenty that simply don’t trust Google.

Neither of these are easy tasks, and this bodes well for Facebook, which continues to get integrated into more of consumers daily habits.

The trust that comes with social and human curation is important across the entire search board. It applies to shopping. It applies to news. It applies to information in general. As the web continues to grow, so to will the importance of knowing who to trust. That means real relationships (social media), and as far as search is concerned, that means access to those relationships.

This is why social is critical to Google, and why search will continue to become more important to Facebook. It’s also why Twitter (along with Twitter search) is such an effective news medium.

Related: What if Facebook Goes Search While Google Struggles to Go Social?

Do you think social adds relevance? Tell us what you think in the comments.

November 30, 2010
Groupon Responds to Acquisition Rumors

Update 4: Groupon has reportedly rejected Google’s offer.

Update 3: Kara Swisher is now reporting that Google has offered $5.3 billion for Groupon, citing "sources close to the situation."

Update 2: We just got a response from Groupon on the matter: "One day, we will have to choose to stay private, go public, or sell. We want to continue to build a great company exactly the same way we’re building it today. Recently there has been a lot of press about these exciting possibilities, but currently there is nothing new to report."

Update: Google responded. A spokesperson tells WebProNews, "Good morning. Unfortunately, we don’t comment on rumor or speculation." Not exactly a denial.

Original Article: Rumors of Google possibly acquiring Groupon stem back to November 19. Now the rumors are hotter than ever, as unconfirmed reports indicate that Google actually is acquiring Groupon.

The rumors started when generally reliable All Things Digital reporter Kara Swisher said, "According to multiple sources close to the situation, Google is in discussions with local deals powerhouse Groupon about buying it. . . . [S]ources said the price being considered is certainly no discount – well above the $2 billion to $3 billion that Yahoo offered Groupon in acquisition talks that took place earlier this year."

That was ten days ago. Now VatorNews reports:

Google has just purchased Groupon for $2.5 billion, according to an unnamed insider who spoke with VatorNews. Neither Google nor Groupon could be reached for comment to confirm the report, but Vator’s source is reliable and the report falls in line with the recent string of Groupon acquisition rumors.

We’ve contacted both Google and Groupon ourselves, but have yet to get a response from either party. Usually, if they didn’t have an announcement to make, Google would offer its usual ‘we don’t comment on rumors and speculation’ kind of response. We still might get that, but nothing so far.

$2.5 billion would be two and a half times Groupon’s valuation, which according to Mashable is $1 billion, with the company bringing in a reported $50 million a month in revenue.

Learn How Groupon Works! from The Point on Vimeo.

The Google acquisition rumors follow similar rumors about Yahoo and Groupon, but those never amounted to an acquisition obviously, though Yahoo and Groupon did team up recently on a distribution partnership for Groupon deals to be integrated with Yahoo’s new Local Offers program.

This in itself would be particularly interesting if these new rumors are true, because Yahoo, one of Google’s classic competitors is striving to be THE place for local deals, with that program, which the company is using to try and "build one of the largest and most comprehensive repositories of local offers on the Internet."

It’s an exciting time to be a local business. Google also recently launched a new social recommendation engine to tie into its local search results. An acquisition of Groupon could mean an even bigger stake for Google in consumer’s local habits. And what if Groupon was somehow tied to Google accounts like most other Google products?

The rumored-acquisition could also be a big part of Google’s strategy against Facebook, which recently announced Facebook Deals. In fact, the "deals" space is getting much more competitive in general. Just last week, Yelp launched its new offering.

Do you think a Groupon acquisition by Google would be a good thing? Tell us what you think.

November 29, 2010
Mobile Users Are Using Their Devices in Your Store. Are You Taking Advantage?

9 out of 10 mobile Internet users have accessed the mobile web while at a store, according to a new study from Yahoo and Nielsen. Furthermore, 51% of those users indicate that they make a purchase after doing research on their mobile device.

"As consumers increasingly turn to their mobile device throughout the day, particularly when making purchasing decisions or even while watching television, marketers have a tremendous opportunity to reach a captive, commerce-oriented audience," a representative for Yahoo tells WebProNews.

The study found that 50% of in-store mobile web activity is related to shopping. Frankly, I’m a little surprised this number isn’t higher, but the fact remains, people are researching products on their phones even while in-store. This represents a need to research your own competition online and look for ways to make sure customers make the purchase while they’re in your store. They’re already there, so you already have a tremendous advantage.

On average, 16% of consumers use their mobile phones for shopping research, while 57% among mobile internet users and 41% among non-mobile Internet users expressed interest in using mobile phones for shopping research in the next 12 months, the study found.

One significant finding is that 1 in 5 mobile shoppers who have seen advertising during the shopping process say they always look at it. With that in mind, consider that the things consumers want mobile ads to include are price, product features, and benefits.

One other random, but interesting finding related to in-store mobile use is that 48% of in-store mobile users take and/or send a picture of a product to a friend or family member. This represents opportunities for customers to attract new customers to your store, particularly if you’re selling unique products.

Similarly, with so many people using their mobile devices in-store, check-in apps should command at least some of your attention. While usage of these apps is relatively small so far, you can expect them to grow, and they present tremendous opportunities for businesses to not only attract the attention of users of these apps (with special offers), but for friends of those users. See Yelp’s new check-in offers feature. Users can sync their check-ins to their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

If you do any television advertising, you may want to look at integrating your campaign with some mobile elements as well. The study also found that 86% of mobile Internet users (and 92% of 13-24 year olds) are using their mobile devices simultaneously with TV.

November 23, 2010
Businesses Can Offer Customers Deals for Checking In with Yelp

Yelp has announced check-in offers for businesses, meaning that businesses can offer Yelp users special deals for checking in at their place of business. Check-ins are tied to Twitter and Faecbook (for Android and iPhone users), so when a user checks in, they are potentially sharing it with a lot of their friends.

The feature is part of the business owner dashboard on Yelp, and the company says it gives businesses a measurable way to reward their loyal customers while attracting new ones.

"What happens when a consumer unlocks your offer? If a consumer chooses the ‘Use it Now!’ option for his Check-in Offer on that visit, it will disappear automatically from his device in a few hours time," the company explains. "The user or the business owner can also tap a button on the phone to mark the offer as used, expiring the timer immediately."

"If a consumer chooses to ‘Save it!’, that Check-in Offer will be saved several places on their device: the ‘About Me’ page; at the top of the business page where they earned that offer and on the Check-ins tab on the Yelp app," the company adds. "The user can then redeem the offer anytime, following the same process above."

Businesses Are Key to Making Check-in Apps Mainstream

Yelp’s offering is just the latest example of how businesses are able to take advantage of users checking into places using mobile apps. While adoption of check-in apps is far from reaching true mass appeal, it is services like this that are bound to nudge the whole phenomenon in that direction.

When businesses are able to offer users rewards, users have a reason to check-in. They’re not just doing it for the "fun" of it. If consumers start to realize that they can get good deals and save money, we’re bound to see this become more and more mainstream.

What will be interesting to keep an eye on is which services consumers prefer the most, and that could end up being largely dictated by which ones businesses choose to promote thier offers with. Yelp has a good advantage for that reason, given that many businesses owners are already familiar with Yelp in general. Facebook also has a clear advantage because not only do most businesses have some kind of Facebook presence already, but the social network has half a billion users.

Currently, Foursquare is still largely considered the poster-child of check-in apps, and CEO Dennis Crowley recently said at ad:tech New York, he’s very "bullish" on where his service is going to go for local merchants.

If you’re interested in utilizing Yelp’s new check-in offers features, I suggest reading their how-to guide. The feature is available in the US, Canada, UK, and Ireland. Plumbers, limo drivers, locksmiths, and other "on-the-go" businesses are restricted from using the feature.

Related:

Check-in Apps Add Key Relevancy Factor to Your Marketing
Thinking of Check-Ins As Searches That Aren’t Going to Google

November 23, 2010
Is Ranking Number One in Google Losing Its Significance?

As you may have noticed, Google has been putting a great deal more emphasis on local these days than in years past. That includes everything from the introduction of Google Places and Place Pages to automatically showing more local results for certain searches, as well as various other solutions offered to businesses at the local level, such as product inventory or tag advertising. Google caters much more to location-based search and local business search than ever before, and that trend is likely to continue.

Do you think classic organic search is losing importance? Share your thoughts.

Local Rises to the Top

WebProNews spoke with well-known SEO industry analyst Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay Inc. at PubCon about search trends and where the search industry is headed. Local is only one facet of this, but it’s a big facet. "Certainly the enhancements have been gradual…now, anybody that has a local result, the first organic link is down below the fold," says Clay. "I never expected that to happen…the organic links, they’re gone. For the last four or five months, I’ve been saying that the new page one in the search results is really positions one, two, and three. That is page one. And I think Google agrees."

"If you look at some of the results, our benchmarks have shown that commonly, there will be seven organic results on the first page, and sometimes as few as four results that are organic on the first page of the Google results set – right now," he says. "So does Google owe any loyalty to what is traditional organic? Of course not. Now, the argument I would say for Google, is that if they’re gonna throw up some local results, they’re gonna argue that those are organic, and that they’re more targeted to location, and therefore that they’re more relevant to the normal organic results, in which case they’re carrying forward with organic results. It’s just that they’re not organic like anybody in the SEO space has ever thought of before."

So SEOs, webmasters and businesses really have to consider how the SEO game has changed in this way. You can’t expect people to go past the first page of results. It happens, but I’m guessing it happens less and less as people adjust their queries to find what they’re looking for when the results don’t provide it. The addition of Google Instant has only fueled this.

Cracking the Local Code

"It [local] has its own algorithm," says Clay. "It’s based on certain kinds of voting systems. We’ve been able to effectively get people into the seven-pack almost all the time. The difference is that the placement within the seven pack hasn’t been deciphered yet. It seems to be random. It is to some degree an accuracy of data factor, and to some degree it’s a review factor. So both of those will play."

"I think that 30% (I think is the number right now) of all results show some sort of local flavor," Clay continues. "What we’re seeing is not so much that 30% have maps, but that the actual body of the search results change to have local sites intermixed. So if you look at a set of results and find positions one through ten, they’re all laid out. If I change my location (in the column, you can change where you’re at)…if I change it from California to New York, I get an entirely different set."

"I noticed just going from my office in California to Las Vegas I got different results, even for terms like ‘search engine optimization’ which is not a shopping term per se, I had a different sequence in the top ten," he explains. "So clearly Google is using geo-location of the searcher to bias the search results. That’s happening in almost everything I see."

The breadth of terms that Google thinks users want local results for seems to be expanding, or at least has expanded from years past. Google has an opportunity to increase its revenue significantly because of this, the way Clay sees it.

"We’re also seeing that local’s showing up more for short terms like one-word phrases like ‘shoes’," Clay points out. "You search for ‘shoes,’ you get a map. That’s just the way it is. And you search for ‘tools’ and you get a map. And things that used to just be ‘what is it?’ are no longer ‘what is it?’. They’re considered to be…if you’re looking for shoes, you’re obviously looking for a shoe store, and they’re sort of assuming that as they go. That kind of a behavior when you see it in search results is really what we’re facing."

Google’s Motivation?

"We’re facing a general shift towards local results, and Google is clearly motivated," he adds. "You would think, using shoes as an example, that there are only so many people that can bid on the word shoes. It’s a national term. If I go local, I have a hundred thousand different opportunities to sell shoes. Every region can have their own bidding on shoes, and people can make money and bid…it’s like local phone books. And it is. And everybody can participate and bid and get on the web."

"And if I do geo-targeted then the return-on-investment’s gonna go up," he continues. "As I make more money, I’m more willing to spend more on my pay-per-click. So on a per-click basis, Google has an opportunity to make 50% more doing nothing more than allowing it to be targeted by location. So Google, perhaps at a greed level or a business level or a democratic level is actually able to make more money the more they promote it."

What’s good for Google is also good for users though. The fact of the matter is that location does matter a lot, when you’re talking about relevancy. It’s one of many factors, much like social (which we’ll no doubt see a great deal of emphasis from Google on as well, going forward) that caters to the individuals searcher, and as location tracking is becoming the norm, these results can get pretty fine-tuned to where the user is at any given time.

Moving Forward

"I think that local is here to stay," says Clay. "I think it’s big, and I think you either play in the local space and either figure out how to get into the seven-pack or you’re not gonna get the clicks, even if you’re number one."

While there is no question that SEOs and marketers are going to have to continue to adapt to this ever-changing landscape, it may actually mean great things for people working on the web including SEOs, but also designers, developers, etc.

"It turns out that 92% of all businesses in the United States – serve a 50 mile radius from where they’re physically located, and that hardly any of these…are on the Internet," says Clay. "That means, especially when you couple it with the emphasis of Google to start doing local kinds of results, that means we’re going to see a massive influx of websites. Brand new websites are going to enter…they’re going to star showing up, they’re going to start ranking, they’re going to start competing. These are sites that have never been here before."

"There’s going to be a multitude of web designers now getting involved, a lot of SEOs or wannabe SEOs are going to be getting involved," he adds. "We’re going to see a lot of people wanting a quick hit – ‘Hi, I built my site, how come nobody’s beating my door down?’ There’s going to be a little bit of a two steps back approach to SEOs – a bunch of people ripping us off. There may be some attempts at spam, although I think Google’s going to be fighting that."

There will likely be new kinds of spam, as he suggests.

Read this for more interesting commentary from Clay regarding the search market in general.

Do you think this shift towards local is a good thing for Google? For users? Tell us what you think.

November 17, 2010
Yahoo Partners With Groupon On Local Deals

Daily deal shopping website Groupon has reached a distribution partnership with Yahoo to bring local deals to users.

“Yahoo is delivering technology at scale that connects people to the things that matter most to them with fresh and engaging experiences,” said Blake Irving, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Yahoo.

“As content and advertising intersect online, our partnership with Groupon is one more great way that we’re making the digital world more personal for our more than 600 million users—connecting them with the local offers that help them better enjoy the world around them.”

Starting today, Groupon deals will be integrated with Yahoo’s new Local Offers program. Groupon deals will first have a presence in the U.S., and soon be introduced internationally. The program will take advantage of Groupon’s depth of daily deals and Yahoo’s size and targeting capabilities.

“This partnership highlights Groupon’s success in building a deep, global platform around local deals as we currently serve over 29 million subscribers in 31 countries,” said Rob Solomon, President and Chief Operating Officer of Groupon.

November 16, 2010
Yahoo Aims to Be THE Place for Local Deals

It’s quite a day for local search. Not only has Google launched a new social recommendation engine to tie into its local results, Yahoo has made a handful of announcements having to do with local and social features.

The company is launching local "quick apps" for users to find restaurants they want and "take action on things they discover in a more productive Yahoo! Search," as they put it. Later this week, Yahoo will launch a new version of Yahoo Sketch-a-Search, which lets users for visually "zero in" on a street or neighborhood to find local restaurants. This can be done from any connected device.

"Other new apps will enable easy comparisons of local restaurants and let people make reservations through OpenTable right on the Yahoo! Search results page," the company says.

Yahoo also announced the launch of Local Offers, which is a program the company is partnering with local offer providers on. Yahoo says they’re working to "build one of the largest and most comprehensive repositories of local offers on the Internet."

Partners include: Groupon, LivingSocial, Gilt City, BloomSpot, BuyWithMe, DealOn, Zozi, CrowdSavings, Lifebooker, FreshGuide, Scoop St, Goldstar, HomeRun, Tippr, Coupons.com, and Valpak.

"The local landscape is exploding with new sources of content and advertising, and consumers want these experiences personalized just for them. Yahoo! is taking the complexity out of finding the great local deals that are most relevant to their interests and needs," said Yahoo Local VP Matt Idema. "With more than 180 million unique visitors to Yahoo!s sites in the U.S., we are uniquely positioned to deliver our local-offer partners the massive scale and targeting needed to reach engaged audiences, grow their businesses, and drive foot traffic to local merchants."

Local Offers is in limited beta in the United States only at this point.

Clearly, it’s an exciting time to be a local business. The web is catering to these businesses like never before, and that’s both from mobile and the desktop.

Yahoo also announced Twitter and Zynga integrations across its properties. People can connect their Twitter accounts with their Yahoo accounts to see and share Twitter updates on the Yahoo homepage, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Pulse. The Zynga integration will allow people to launch, play, and share games on Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Games, My Yahoo, Yahoo Toolbar, and Yahoo! Pulse. Yahoo also rolled out a new Yahoo Messenger Beta with new social features.

"Our job is to connect you with the people, places and things that matter most to you – whether that’s making a restaurant reservation, finding a discounted tee time, or playing popular online games with friends," said Blake Irving, EVP and chief product officer at Yahoo.

It’s interesting that both Google and Yahoo have made new announcements that involve both local and social together, yet in very different ways. It’s also interesting that not only are local and social so closely related, but increasingly local and gaming. Look no further than the slew of check-in apps if you don’t know what I mean.

Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley recently declared his love for Super Mario Bros. right alongside his vision for turning Foursquare into a much more useful platform for users and local merchants. In fact, a great deal of the conversation at ad:tech New York a couple weeks ago was about location-based services (LBS) and ways that businesses have used them in the past, are using them today, and will use them in the future. Much of this is directly related so some kind of gaming. It’s a fascinating development in the industry.

It’s not all fun and games though. Yahoo also reminds us today about trend tracking. The company announced Yahoo Clues Beta, a new tool for looking at search trends.

November 16, 2010
Google Brings New Level of Relevancy to Local

Google has combined local search with personalized search, and social search to make a potentially powerful new kind of Google result that should benefit both users and businesses. These results come from a new Google product called "Hotpot", a recommendation engine designed for integration with Google Places.

The concept is simple: rate businesses based on your experience, build relationships with others to build trust (in opinion), and get a new kind of relevancy in your search results. Social and location are two of the strongest indications of relevance, at least when it comes to finding a business in the real world. You want something that is nearby and something that people you trust can vouch for. This, in concept, combines these.

The Increased Local Focus

It’s obvious that Google is placing more emphasis on local these days. Just a couple weeks ago, Google introduced Place Search, a new kind of search result that can be accessed from Google’s left panel, but unlike many of the other search options available in the panel, Google will actually return you these results for queries automatically, when it thinks you are looking for local information.

In fact, search analyst Bruce Clay just discussed Google’s increased emphasis on local at length with us, pointing out that local is basically burying traditional organic search results.

"Now, anybody that has a local result, the first organic link is down below the fold," he said. "I never expected that to happen…the organic links, they’re gone. For the last four or five months, I’ve been saying that the new page one in the search results is really positions one, two, and three. That is page one. And I think Google agrees."

Now Google has added a new and very interesting element to local results in these recommendations.

Getting Personalized

Personalization (at least when it’s done right) essentially equals relevancy. If results are personalized the best they can be, they’re going to be the results you want or need. That’s why Google is encouraging users to participate in Hotpot.

"Why rate the places you’ve been? First, your ratings will personalize your search results by customizing them according to your tastes," explains product manager Mat Balez. "Even better, when you add friends to the mix using Hotpot on your computer, your ratings will point them in the direction of the best enchiladas in town the next time they crave Mexican food, wherever they happen to be."

"Of course, this works the other way too — so to reap the rewards, you’ll want to add friends to get recommendations for the places they love," adds Balez. That brings us to…

The "Social Layer" and the Missing Ingredient

Hotpot can prove useful without the social layer. If you rate enough things, you can give Google an idea of the kinds of things you like. This is how most recommendation engines work. Think about Netflix. If you rate enough movies, you’ll get more suggestions for movies that Netflix thinks you’ll like based on those. However, when you bring friends into the equation, you get that added layer of suggestion from people you know and/or trust. It’s one thing to get a suggestion from a company that you don’t really know personally and doesn’t really know you. It’s another thing entirely to get a suggestion from your best friend or someone else you have a relationship with whose tastes may be similar.

The missing ingredient and the elephant in the proverbial room is obviously Facebook, since that’s where all your friends probably are. Google’s challenge is to change that – not to necessarily take your friends away from Facebook, but to get them using Google accounts. Fortunately, Google accounts are attached to many products, such as Gmail, Buzz, Google Docs, and perhaps most importantly (simply in terms of numbers) YouTube.

You may have more friends with Google accounts than you even realize. It’s just a matter of finding them. Google could do a better job of making that easier. The company has created the Hotpot rating app, which lets users do the rating and invite friends. This can be done from the web or from Google’s Mobile Maps on Android.

"By adding someone else as a friend, you’ll be inviting them to see more than just your Places nickname," Google explains in its help guide. "Instead of seeing your nickname tied to your ratings and reviews, they’ll see the name on your Google Profile and your Google Profile picture. When they see a recommendation, they’ll know it came from you, because they’ll see your Google Profile full name and photo in the explanation…In order for a friend to use Google Places, they need to have a Google Account."

It looks like you have to add friends by email address. It would be so much better with Facebook Connect, which Google doesn’t seem to keen on using. In fact, Eric Schmidt addressed this very fact at the Web 2.0 summit this week. Danny Sullivan’s liveblogged account of Schimdt’s words says, "One of the fundamental principles on the internet is that this kind of information is open. So I worry, as a general response, not just about Facebook, that things are developing to keep too much information private."

Schmidt may have a point, but in the meantime, the users will suffer, and it’s entirely possible that the product’s adoption will suffer as well.

Google’s angle seems to be to get people involved as they are added to their friends’ friend lists. When I sign up and add a friend, that friend will get an email with the subject "Chris Crum wants to share recommendations with you on Google Places" and a body saying:

Chris has added you as a friend on Google Places — a smarter way to discover places you’ll love. Add Chris back to see new recommendations in Google search results, on Google Maps, and on your mobile phone.

Add Chris as a friend

Google Places is powered by Hotpot, our new local recommendation engine. Every time you rate places on Google, we’ll customize your search results with new recommendations based on your unique tastes. Adding friends whose opinions you trust makes your recommendations even better. Start building your own guide to the world at google.com/hotpot.

You can invite anybody you want to with an email address, and it will retrieve your Google contacts automatically. However, probably have a lot of friends on Facebook that do have Google accounts, but you don’t necessarily know their Gmail addresses. Also, when inviting people that don’t have Gmail addresses, you’re asking them to do a lot – sign up for Google in general. This might be awkward for some, though Google clearly wants more people to have Google accounts.

Potentially Powerful, But Will People Use it?

Hotpot has the potential to be a very useful tool for search. It would probably be more useful with Facebook data, but users can still get use out of it without this. The real question is will they? Will enough people find their way to the app and rate Places? We’ll see. Those that do and get their friends to join should have some pretty relevant results. Good luck trying to crack this from an SEO standpoint.

If Google does ever get Facebook data integrated here, it might be even more of a reason for businesses to start utilizing personal profiles more (like with Facebook’s whole prioritized inbox thing). In the meantime, businesses better have their Google Places info in order.

Google indexes over 50 million "places" around the world.

November 16, 2010
Check-In Apps Add Key Relevancy Factor to Your Marketing

Are check-in apps just a fad or are they the future of local business marketing? It may still be too early to tell, but I’m starting to lean toward the latter, because this space is only picking up more and more steam, and businesses and marketers are getting excited about it as more apps continue to flood the mobile app markets.

Are check-in apps just a fad? Tell us what you think.

At PubCon this week, WebProNews spoke with Gib Olander, director of biz dev at Localeze, which provides local business listings to all kinds of sites and apps. He certainly seems convinced that location-based services (LBS) are here to stay.

"Geo-location is just an outstanding place, and the way I think about it is, we started with a big search box and we all kind of wanted to find answers to ‘what’ questions and things have evolved pretty quickly to a ‘what’ and a ‘where’, so we did a geo-modifier," he tells us. "We added a state or a zip code or a city. We started to find more information."

Putting the "Where" and the "When" in Marketing

"Nicely, social layers added on top of that where you start to get your Facebook and your friends’ recommendations," he continues. "Yelp did a great job with reviews, and then Foursquare came along, and they’ve added a really neat new component with this check-in feature, and there’s other sites that are doing it as well, like Brightkite and SCVNGR, but one of the things I think is really neat and new for marketers is they’ve added the time of ‘when.’"

That "when" is a key factor in executing a successful campaign, and it’s one that just hasn’t been able to get nearly as precise in marketing channels of the past. The mobile device in customers’ pocket tracking right where they are when they’re there (particularly when they’re sharing this information on purpose) is astonishingly powerful.

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"When someone is there really changes the relevancy of what kind of information you want to share with them – what kind of things you want to talk to them about," says Olander. "So, geo-location has added all those…kind of layers: the who, what, where, why, and when on top of each other, and it’s created new opportunities for businesses to talk to their customers, and for customers to discover new businesses, and I think that’s just really exciting for our space."

"Michael Metcalf from Yahoo talked about this at a conference," he recalls. "Your spatial network is just about as important as your social network. So who’s around you and when they’re around you both from a physical location, and businesses need to be aware of that with other businesses, but also people around you. Because when people congregate in an area, they leave a pyschographic imprint of who they are and what they are, and why they’re there. And marketers can tend to look at that."

"Like so right now at PubCon, if you were tracking this event, you would see that by the profiles people have when they’re here now at this particular time…you know, we’ve got a lot of interesting SEO and SEM and geo-location and marketing and targeting," Olander explains. "So as a marketer or advertiser…and a big feel for tech…so maybe if you’re the Marriott nearby, you could start to target the area during the hours that we’re here with special offers of free wi-fi or that type of thing."

Which Check-In Apps Should I Utilize?

One challenge that marketers face along with these types of opportunities is knowing which services to utilize. There are seemingly new check-in apps coming out just about every day. Foursquare is the one that’s gotten the most attention thus far, but there are plenty of others breathing down that company’s neck to be the "it" check-in app – the Facebook to Foursquare’s MySpace. Of course, Facebook itself is doing more in this space with its Facebook Places product. It will be interesting to see how other apps co-exist with that. Facebook Places is only going to get bigger and bigger. The social network has over half a billion user, let’s not forget.

"I think the real competition from the Facebook ecosystem is gonna come from third-party developers like Zynga that build on top of the Facebook Places API, because you’ll notice with Facebook Places that they haven’t done anything with like virtual goods like badges or points, and these are some of the main attractions of Foursquare and Gowalla," Lawrence Coburn, who runs the geo-location app provider DoubleDutch recently told WebProNews. "So they’ve just left that open, but I know that third-party developers won’t be so shy, and they’ll come in and make games, because there’s a lot of good game developers on Facebook."

That’s certainly another advantage for the social network giant, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to consider the rest of these apps doomed.

Foursquare itself has some pretty big plans, particularly for local businesses. CEO Dennis Crowley talked about this at ad:tech last week. "The harder part is consumer brands…consumer packaged goods," he said, adding that it’s hard to find a practical way to use Foursquare to sell things like batteries or cereal. The local business stuff is much more obvious though, and what may not work with Foursquare or even Facebook Places, may work with another app.

"Across the board, they’re all really important," says Olander. "I think there’s a stat out that there’s more than six thousand LBS apps on the iPhone alone, so fragmentation is a reality of the marketplace. What we think, at Localeze, is that you look at each one of them as an opportunity…what you really have to establish is your business identity online."

"It used to be that you could just have a brick and mortar store, and put a nice awning up or a nice sign up, and people would walk by and find you," he adds. "But today, you really have to own that online presence, and that starts with owning your name/address/phone number. You make sure it’s consistent in multiple applications, and then you’re starting to cover them all. You start to monitor each of those and see where most of the foot traffic, or where your audience or customers are, and then really interact with those and create unique content offers for them."

Are you marketing to customers with location-based services? Tell us about your experiences.

November 14, 2010
Yelp Launches Windows Phone 7 App

Now that Windows Phone 7 devices are available in the U.S. we can expect that apps to start flooding in. Yelp announced its new Windows Phone 7 app today, available in Europe and the U.S.

The app lets users use location-aware technology to find restaurants, shops, bars, etc. and read reviews for businesses, browse photos, map business locations, and get directions.

"It’s no secret that mobile has been a huge focus for us this year," says Eric Singley, Yelp’s Director of Consumer and Mobile Products. "With over 2.6 million users in the past month, we’ve been developing like crazy on our iPhone and Android applications, and working hard to bring goodies to our other platforms."

"Couple that with our focus on rolling out Yelp in new countries and today you have an app made in heaven: the 6th member of the Yelp Mobile family, Windows Phone 7!" adds Singley.

As of mid-September, Yelp had over 13 million reviews. Businesses are going to want to pay a significant amount of attention to the conversation around their brand on Yelp. Clearly, the already-popular site is continuing to expand (despite its rocky relationship with Google Places).

Yelp says it will have more features available for Windows Phone app soon.

What apps do you want to see for Windows Phone 7? Tell us in the comments.

November 8, 2010
Considering Check-In App Strategies for Business

It’s been an interesting day for location-based services. Facebook of course made its announcements. Yelp announced it will soon introduce check-in offers.

At ad:tech NY, location-based services have been a hot topic of discussion (possibly the hottest). Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley spoke about his ambitions for making Foursquare an incredible tool for local businesses. A bit later, Greg Sterling led a panel with Murphy USA Internet Business Director Casey Petersen, Whrrl VP of products John Kim, MTV.com and VH1.com General Manager Kristin Frank, and Gowalla Director of Business Development Andy Ellwood.

Petersen and Kim discussed how Murphy USA (the Gas stations in front of Walmart) has been utilizing check-in app Whrrl to engage customers, build loyalty, and increase recommendations. Interestingly 44% of check-ins were new customers. More interesting yet, 85% of check-ins came because of the program, in cases when it would’ve been more convenient to go to a competitor.

According to Petersen, those using the app are three times more likely to visit more than once per week vs average customers, about 50% visit over six times a month, 72% are more likely to recommend a friend, and 56% are more likely to increase purchases due to the program.

In terms of influence, Petersen said Whrrl came in just behind email and Facebook, and over SMS and Twitter for Murphy USA’s customers. The three lessons Murphy USA and Whrrl learned from the project, as presented by Kim, were:

1. Align goals of the business and LBS service
2. Building proof should be first goal. Scale second.
3. Use LBS to highlight real people at your physical business in your broader social media efforts.

Frank said of MTV, "We’re always trying to set the standards and lead the way in social media. MTV and VH1 were the first media companies to partner with Foursquare on celebrity mode, she said, and MTV has the most followers on Foursquare of any brand.

"We’ve recently moved to more of an ‘expand the brand’ model," she said.

"Our audience expects us to embrace these different sites…different technologies that they’re using," she added.

"At the end of the day, Facebook is already starting to go there [LBS]…when they open it up to application development….that’s when this thing goes mainstream."

Let’s not forget Gowalla. Ellwood said, "It’s not just the check-ins. It’s also the photos that you take and the comments that you make."

"Gowalla is a virtual passport for your phone that allows you to catalog places visited, photos taken, comments shared and pins collected."

A question he says businesses should be asking is, "What are the places that my brand should be associated with?"

The places, by the way, don’t have to be predictable.

November 3, 2010
CEO Dennis Crowley “Bullish” on Foursquare for Local Merchants

"Whenever I hear SMB, I think of Super Mario Bros," Foursquare co-Founder and CEO Dennis Crowley said today. But in all seriousness, he has tremendous pride in his service and its future use for local businesses (among other things).

Speaking here at ad:tech New York, he compared Foursquare to a Google Analytics for people who walk in your door. "These are your best customers," he said. "The check-in is kind of a commodity."

"The check-in is ultimately boring," said Crowley, adding that Foursquare is focused on what comes after the check-in. The company wants to deliver more relevant content based on check-ins, beyond just games. "Every check-in should mean something," he said, though games are still a big part of what Foursquare is about. "The whole thing is based on Super Mario Bros." he joked.

But he talked about scenarios such as traveling to Chicago and getting some tips on things to do based on where you’re at and your past experiences in another city like New York. Real, practical uses. He says he’s "really bullish" on the local merchant-related stuff Foursquare is doing.

"The harder part is consumer brands…consumer packaged goods," he said. For example, things like Foursquare to help sell batteries or cereal. "We’re definitely still in that experimental stage."

Foursquare is not without its skeptics of course. Neither was Twitter when it started, he reminds us. "We’ll be kicking ass a year from now," he says.

There are plenty of people that still think Twitter is useless, and there will probably always be those opinions about Foursquare as well, but Crowley is confident that once they are able to start showing real metrics and data about why this can be useful, more and more people will start to get it. "I think we’re still in the super early days of this."

Do you get Foursquare? Tell us what you think.

November 3, 2010