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Tag: locu

  • GoDaddy Buys Website Builder Partner Locu

    GoDaddy Buys Website Builder Partner Locu

    GoDaddy announced today that it is acquiring San Francisco-based Locu, which provides services for local merchants. According to the company it’s used by over 30,000 businesses.

    The two companies have actually been working together for several months. GoDaddy integrated Locu into its Website Builder tool when it launched in May. Now they’ve simply taken things a big step forward.

    “Locu epitomizes what GoDaddy is all about – both companies are hell-bent on helping the ‘little guy’ thrive on the Internet,” said GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving. “Locu is comprised of amazing technologists who have taken the very complex problem of helping small businesses ‘get found’ wherever consumers are looking and are solving it through elegant, technology-based services. We are welcoming some of the brightest technology minds on the planet to our GoDaddy family.”

    “We couldn’t think of a more powerful platform to accelerate Locu’s growth,” said Locu CEO Rene Reinsberg. “We each have a core mission to help local businesses succeed. Our team developed deep respect for GoDaddy during our initial partnership and was impressed by the execution speed and quality, its industry-leading customer support, and the passionate, experienced new management team who puts ‘product first.’ All of this further positions GoDaddy as the ‘go-to’ provider in the small business space.”

    “Over the last few months, Locu has played an incredible role in helping grow the Presence and Commerce business through our Website Builder partnership,” said Raj Mukherjee, GM of Presence and Commerce at GoDaddy. “The Locu team will play a much bigger role in helping GoDaddy’s small businesses reach their customers more effectively and at lower cost.”

    Locu will remain in San Francisco as well as Cambridge, where it also has an office. All of the companies employees are joining GoDaddy, and they’re actually in the process of hiring more.

    Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Kara Swisher at All Things D claims the deal was at about $70 million in cash and stock.

  • Foursquare Adds More Menus, Continues to Become a Better Tool for Local Search & Discovery

    Foursquare Adds More Menus, Continues to Become a Better Tool for Local Search & Discovery

    Over the past year or so, Foursquare has been going through a major transformation – well, at least a major improvement. What they’ve been doing is making both small and large tweaks to turn the focus of the service toward local search and discovery. A company that started as a simple check-in app is now competing with the likes of Yelp, Google Places, and Urbanspoon.

    You may recall a major app update last month with a stated goal to “reveal more of the world around you the moment you open up the app.” Then, a few weeks later, Foursquare completely redesigned their location pages to make them more photo-rich and informative. If you have increased traffic to your location pages (which Foursquare does) and want to continue to tout yourself as the go-to place for information on locations, you have to keep making those pages better.

    Today, Foursquare is taking another step in that direction with an expansion of menus on restaurant pages.

    “It’s a Saturday night and you’re meeting friends for dinner. You’ve narrowed the choices down to two popular Italian spots – but how to choose? Starting today, you’ll see more menus in Foursquare, so you can decide given what restaurants have to offer. In addition to SinglePlatform, we’ve also partnered with Locu (a company that shares our mission of helping restaurants and local businesses connect with customers),” says Foursquare.

    Locu is a web-wide menu platform founded in 2011. Last year, it received $4 million in Series A funding, fyi. Foursquare has partnered with SinglePlatform on their menus since the launch of the “Explore” feature in January of 2012.

    Right now, it’s just menus for restaurants – but Foursquare says that will eventually grow into price and service lists for a variety of businesses. That includes hair salons, gyms, dry cleaners, etc.