Zaarly, a peer-to-peer marketplace, has opened its new Storefronts feature in New York, giving creative local residents a chance to boost growing their businesses and professionalize their hobbies. The new feature launched in San Francisco earlier this month and is expanding to other U.S. cities. Read more »
With the launch of its new Storefronts feature, peer-to-peer marketplace Zaarly is defining itself as a marketplace of people, not just a marketplace of goods and services. Zaarly is launching Storefronts in San Francisco but said it will quickly roll out to other U.S. cities. Read more »
Treater, a social gifting startup launching Wednesday, wants to use Facebook help people send impromptu, casual gifts to friends. The Washington, DC-based startup is also announcing that it has raised $2.5 million dollars. Read more »
Mobile payment start-up Square is working to fill out its menu of services and today it’s revealing new loyalty, inventory, analytics and discovery tools for Square Register and Pay with Square, helping Square appeal to a wider number of merchants. Read more »
SignPost, a New York start-up, that helps craft online marketing campaigns for local businesses is getting more money to expand its efforts. Spark Capital is leading a $3.75 million Series A round in the three-year-old company. Read more »
Facebook confirmed that it has acquired customer loyalty service Tagtile, which helps merchants distribute rewards, offers and coupons to in-store customers via their phones. The deal follows the acquisition of Instragram this week and it shows that Facebook is looking at shoring up its mobile needs. Read more »
The future of location-based services is in commerce, payments and deals, said Sam Altman, founder of Loopt. He just sold his startup to pre-paid card provider Green Dot and is working on mobile payment products. That’s where he said location will have the biggest impact. Read more »
Kapture, a new start-up from an original member of Qwiki, lets business reward users for sharing pictures about their establishment through their social networks. It allows merchants to leverage user generated content to help spread the word about their businesses and strengthen their relationships with consumers. Read more »
Mobile shopping reward app Shopkick is realizing its full potential by tying into Visa’s payment processing network, helping close the loop on transactions and providing new incentives for users to make purchases. Users will now get rewarded not just for visiting a store but buying products. Read more »
VeriFone is looking to become not just a seller of point-of-sale terminals but a provider of managed services for merchants, whic will need help in transitioning to new alternative payment systems like NFC. VeriFone projects half its revenue in 2015 will be from services. Read more »
After turning down an acquisition offer, shopping assistant start-up ShopSavvy is moving ahead with plans to go it alone. It raised $7 million in a Series A round led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. ShopSavvy is looking to ride the exploding mobile commerce market. Read more »
Square is making its Card Case wallet app hands-free, enabling users to walk into a store and pay without ever pulling out their smartphone. They just say their name and order. The company is showing it wants to perfect the entire buying process, not just payments. Read more »
PayPal has been down on near field communication for payments, saying it was avoiding NFC because it needs at least three to five years to get traction. But the company is softening its stance as it prepares to pitch retailers on its vision for in-store payments. Read more »
EBay and PayPal formally unveiled their X.commerce platform, an ambitious attempt to bridge online and offline commerce and arm developers and merchants with a host of tools to help them facilitate sales. X.commerce turns eBay into broader technology provider to merchants and developers. Read more »
LevelUp, the daily deal play from location-based service SCVNGR, is making another go of it, this time with a credit-based structure that utilizes a new mobile payment system built by SCVNGR. The service is now expanding beyond Boston and Philadelphia to New York and San Francisco. Read more »
Skype’s purchase of GroupMe has largely revolved around the communications side of the deal. But a big component is also GroupMe’s plans to monetize conversations by presenting local offers and discounts that help people make group decisions in real time. Read more »
Google has snapped up The Dealmap, an aggregator of nearby shopping deals, in an acquisition that furthers its Google Offers ambitions. The purchase, whose price was not disclosed, shows that Google is proceeding even without its unsuccessful $6 billion bid for Groupon last year. Read more »
ThinkNear caught my eye at the New York TechStars demo day with its data-driven approach to solving problems for local businesses. The company announced on Tuesday that it raised $1.6 million from investors to help roll out their technology, which hits New York Tuesday. Read more »
The future of coupons is moving toward digital and mobile, something that startup SavingStar is taking full advantage of. The company told me it has hit half a million users since it launched its ecoupon product in April, putting it on a faster pace than Groupon’s. Read more »
Next Jump spent 15 years in stealth mode before it emerged as a power player in the employee discount and rewards business. It is now taking its experience and assets to step up as a potential powerhouse in the local deals market. Read more »
American Express, a 162-year-old financial services company, is marshaling its vast resources in pretty impressive ways to create what could be one of the strongest offerings in the local commerce space. The company said it’s just getting started with partnerships with Facebook, Foursquare and SCVNGR. Read more »
American Express is showing it has designs on being a big player in the daily deal market. The company is introducing a new social platform called Link, Like, Love, that will bring American Express deals to Facebook users through their social graph. Read more »
LocalResponse — a marketing platform that allows advertisers to send out targeted tweets to consumers based on where consumers have checked in or where they say they are on social networks — has found that its targeting work is paying off with significant engagement from consumers. Read more »
For once, the biggest news in social media and real-time technologies didn’t come from Facebook. Rather, it was Google that, at the end of the second quarter, introduced an innovative collection of technologies, under the Google+ label. Another big headline was the return of digital music: Pandora filed a successful IPO, and Google and Apple unrolled cloud-based music offerings. Meanwhile, other social networks generated valuable lessons about technology and business strategies. LinkedIn went public, while Myspace was sold. And Apple essentially appointed Twitter its mobile social network infrastructure supplier. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Skype, Groupon, Turntable.fm and Amazon. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Foursquare is going national with a partnership with American Express that will enable its members to redeem location-based deals by swiping their credit card. But the company faces challenges in proving that it can compete in the local commerce space. Read more »
Groupon’s hotly-awaited initial stock offering will either stand as a beacon of hope to technology and Internet stocks of all kinds, or as a giant warning sign indicating a huge bubble of irrational exuberance. The company’s prospectus contains plenty of evidence for both sides. Read more »
Just months after raising $950 million, Groupon has filed for an IPO as it looks to stay ahead of a gaggle of competitors in the daily deal market. The company faces challenges in its high user acquisition cost and expansion into local and mobile. Read more »
Zaarly, a new start-up that is launching today, is hoping to speed up the pace of local commerce with a new mobile application that helps bring buyers of services and goods together with local sellers and providers in real time. Read more »
An ex-Facebooker is looking to clip the multi-billion-dollar, daily-deals industry where it hurts by *gasp* putting local businesses back in control of their own discount destiny. Groupon and assorted clones, meet thruSocial: the first “self-serve” media advertising and deals platform for consumer businesses. Read more »
EBay is buying location-based service and ad network WHERE in a deal that gives it added ability to drive more local and offline commerce. The pick-up will add important talent and technology to eBay and PayPal as they look to become more locally relevant to users. Read more »
