The vision for Hyperlocal — if you believe in it — boils down to two camps. The first camp says it is a labor of love that must be hand-curated to work with merchants and engage the citizenry, town by town. Perhaps sites can use shopping and other directory tools, like Local Thunder and …

The arrival of Groupon and LivingSocial four years ago appeared to be a no money down, fail-safe way to get a hold of small-business accounts. But the followup hasn’t been easy, and the race to win SMB accounts is still anybody’s to win.
In fact, there is no single “disruptive” door into the marketplace, says …

Inventory hasn’t yet emerged as a “must have” for merchants, but the strategic importance of tracking store inventory remains undiminished. Merchants will potentially use inventory levels to drive users to specific locations, build promotions to get rid of overage (or remove promotions when supplies are running low).
While far from universal, many national retailers are beginning …

Here’s what we’ve been waiting to announce: Google Offers’ head Nitin Mangtani will join our great list of keynoters at ILM East March 26-28 in Boston. We believe Mangtani’s appearance marks one of the first public debuts of Google Offers, which is playing a major role in Google’s vital local strategy, along with Google Places, …

Yelp is IPOing today at $15 a share, allowing it to raise $123 million on a valuation of $900 million — $400 million more than it was apparently offered by Google a couple of years ago.
We know from the S-1 that Yelp earned $58.4 million in net revenues in the first nine months of 2011, …

The giants of American commerce are now diving into the “local” space. American Express, MasterCard, Citibank are just some of the big brands entering local via SMB and national retailer relationships. FirstData, which processes secure transactions for 7,000 financial institutions and more than 4 million U.S. merchants — 50 percent of U.S. merchants — has …

Until recently, the European deal market was basically a year behind the U.S. But NimbleCommerce CEO Prashant Nedungadi argues that “they are beginning to catch up.” Nedungadi says they’ve graduated to more advanced platforms, and are more committed to driving revenues.
Some European newspaper publishers, for instance, are outpacing local Groupon and LivingSocial results. European …

MerchantCircle, which was sold to Reply.com in May 2011, continues to rethink the traditional Yellow Pages small-business model. The company today unveils a website that is less oriented toward directory listings, and more oriented — it hopes — toward winning more consumer traffic, generating more SMB leads and better monetization.
While the new platform has been …

It is a given in some circles that the next era of promotions will be driven by electronic wallets that perform transactions, manage deals and coupons, and target and engage loyal consumers. Google, American Express, MasterCard, LivingSocial, Groupon, AT&T, Microsoft and Square are just some of the companies that are purported to be developing …

The ILM East agenda is shaping up as our favorite program in years, with cutting-edge BIA/Kelsey research and speakers. The event is teeming with new revenue and strategic opportunities for Internet and mobile advertising and commerce. The ideas keep coming and coming.
Keynotes at the show include Groupon Vice Chair Ted Leonsis, American Express SVP …

Local businesses don’t have their own loyalty programs but can now benefit from tapping into bank programs. “Local is the key to our strategy,” says Jim Douglass, SVP at Cartera, a Lexington, Massachusetts-based company that manages loyalty programs for many top banks and credit card companies. Douglass sees 5 million SMBs potentially seeking to extend …

Yelp reviews are susceptible to a lot of noise — relatives and friends of a business, mischief makers, people without any perspective (or taste). In fact, most review sites — Trip Advisor, Zagat, etc. — are affected by these factors.
Some sites have tried to get around this problem by using proxies for reviews. A …

ILM East keynoter Ted Leonsis, in a BIA/Kelsey pre-conference webinar, proclaimed a “new generation and reinvigoration of local products.” The new opportunity in local is “where social, video and mobile intersect,” Leonsis said.
What surprises Leonsis, who currently serves as Groupon’s vice chair and a board member of AmEx, is that VCs and entrepreneurs are correctly …

ILM East is shaping up as a major landmark conference. Since our last update, we have many new “adds” to the agenda, and it looks like we’re going to have a really big and prestigious event.
Even before it begins, there is lots of stuff happening. we’ve added an exciting trip out to The Boston Globe’s …

It’s safe to say that Ted Leonsis is at the center of the local revolution. He’s done it all, from his early days trying to jump-start e-commerce at Redgate, to his work building a local framework at AOL (i.e., MapQuest, Digital City, MovieFone, Studio Now); to his current role as vice chair, Groupon; board member, …

Following in the footsteps of major brands such as Apple, Nike, Harley Davidson and ESPN, LivingSocial is now seeking to enhance its core brand via a retail “experience” center where book clubs, cooking classes, painting classes and performances can all take place.
The effort follows a trial of a LivingSocial membership program with built-in …

The deals culture is shifting from customer acquisition to customer loyalty by necessity. Why? Deals have begun losing high-income women. That’s the view of Next Jump CEO Charlie Kim, a featured speaker at ILM East in Boston March 26-28.
“Daily deals had an initial surge then quickly lost flavor on a key customer segment — …

We’re seeing more vertical players trying to leverage their brands with deal offerings and advertising. The latest one is Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Twenty-two Blue Cross state organizations around the U.S. are working with Analog Analytics to launch Blue365, a deal program offering health and fitness discounts, as well as adjacencies like tax prep. …

Amazon.com, which is moving in multiple directions vis-à-vis local, has agreed to buy TeachStreet, the service for matching teachers and students. Amazon’s interest appears to be less in TeachStreet than in the underlying e-commerce platform for SMBs. The platform already is being used by The Washington Post for its Service Alley SMB leads service.
TeachStreet …

LivingSocial, in a battle with Groupon and other deal providers to gain (and keep) market share, lost an eye popping $558 million beyond its $245 million in net earnings, according to a regulatory filing by Amazon.com, which owns 31 percent of the company. The filing was written about in today’s Washington Post.
The Post article notes …