Uberall Raises $115M, Buys MomentFeedGiven that I work for Uberall we debated whether to cover this. But it is a big story; so here's the news: Uberall raised a $115M

Digital Boosted SMBs, Can They Keep It Up? Many small businesses pivoted during COVID to offer more digital capabilities: better websites, chatbots, online appointments, ordering and food delivery. Half of

Antitrust Bills 'Package' Takes Aim at Big TechA bipartisan group of House lawmakers today introduced five separate reform bills aiming to rein in the power of big technology companies. They

Apple Goes All Google Maps  Apple made a ton of OS and feature announcements during its WWDC developer keynote on Monday. The Verge and TechCrunch have good, comprehensive roundups. Here

Google: Newspaper Ad Losses Not Our FaultNewspaper publishers often blame Google for the decline of ad revenues. In the US, Craigslist took lots of blame early on. More recently, EU

Nextdoor Revamps Classifieds – Now Called 'Finds'Nextdoor announced a new section in its classifieds marketplace, for free items: Free Finds. That ties into an overall rebranding of its marketplace as "Finds.

To the Winners Go the Stores  Even as many retailers struggle and pundits pronounce stores endangered, we're entering a new era where stores will play a reinvigorated role. Successful DTC

Google: 'Content for Data' Is OverGoogle held its annual Google Marketing Live event this week. There were many ads- and analytics- related announcements involving automation, simplification and reach. Several focused

Fake Review Economy Is Booming Google is the dominant local reviews platform. It also dominates the world of fake reviews. A new investigation by the CBC discusses the problem and

Food Fight: DoorDash vs. UberEats Food delivery in the US is estimated to be worth nearly $30 billion according to estimates. It's a high stakes market with intense competition among

20 Years After Apple, Google Opens a Retail StoreIt's 20 years since the first Apple Store opened in Tyson's Corner VA. And it's hard to overstate the importance of Apple's

AI Making 'Search' More Conversational AI was center stage at Google's I/O developer event. During a 2+ hour long keynote yesterday, Google made announcements across categories. Among them, were

Mask Confusion Hits States, Retailers Last week the CDC changed its mask guidance. The agency proclaimed that fully vaccinated people didn't need a mask outdoors or in most indoor settings.

The Future of (Local) CommerceShopify's new Future of Commerce report builds on surveys as well as customer data. It's a kind of soup-to-nuts discussion of  shopping and commerce trends, including

Nextdoor: Preference for SMBs Growing Nextdoor released a new report, showcasing attitudes and behaviors of its audience ("consumers 16-64 who have used the Nextdoor app/platform in the last month"

Leak Shows Massive Scale of Review FraudThe scale of the review fraud problem online is not precisely known, except that it's big. This is especially true for destinations like Google

IDFA: Consumers Saying "No" to Tracking According to a new report from Flurry Analytics (Verizon Media), based on roughly 10 days of data, the iOS 14.5 opt-in rate for

Facebook's Trump Ban: Who Gets to Speak Online? The world's most important political debates are now happening on social media. Over the past several weeks, for example, Indian Prime Minister

Yahoo's Death By 1000 Cuts Continues with PE Sale Verizon is selling its media and ad-tech assets, AOL and Yahoo, to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. The company paid

SMB Websites and Commerce Now Inseparable Mailchimp started as an email platform and moved into "marketing automation." It has now become an all-inclusive SMB SaaS platform for digital marketing. The

Apple Tracking Earnings: MSFT, Shopify, Facebook, Apple & Google BeatIt's a big earnings week. Microsoft and Shopify reported strong revenue growth. Shopify was described as a "blowout" (up 110% YoY)

Google Poised to Disrupt the $27B Food Delivery BusinessGoogle has become a potentially disruptive player in the multi-billion dollar food delivery business. One estimate of the market's current value is

Native Apple Maps Ratings Coming Soon to USIn September 2020, it became clear that Apple Maps was going to start collecting its own user photos and local recommendations (thumbs up/

Zagat Relaunches with New Scoring, Emphasis on Photos The Zagat restaurant guide was first published in 1979 by Nina and Tim Zagat. After many years as a print publication, its

Most Franchise Brands Local Marketing Laggards SOCi's recently published "Localized Marketing Benchmark Report" (reg. req'd) scores 275 franchise brands on local marketing maturity and effectiveness. The study uses a range