The latest from TechCrunch
- Yelp Gears Up To Take On Groupon, Starts Testing Local Deals
- Delta's SkyClub Site Reimagined To Be Less Barf Bag Worthy
- Glam Media Launches BrashSports As It Homes In On Male Audience
| Yelp Gears Up To Take On Groupon, Starts Testing Local Deals | Top |
| It looks like Yelp is looking to cash in on the local deal craze. As the folks over at deal aggregator YipIt first noticed, Yelp has recently been testing time-limited local deals in a select number of pilot cities. The proof lies in a comment thread that began June 23, when a Yelp user noticed a deal running for $20 for $45 of services at Papillon salon. The user wrote that you can purchase the deal through Yelp with your credit card. Yelp employee Olivia L. responded to say that Yelp was “testing it out for fun to see what kind of response it generates”. The feature would obviously compete with Groupon and a throng of other deal sites , though it isn’t clear if Yelp is testing a group-buying mechanic or if it’s simply offering deals for a limited period of time. We’ve reached out to Yelp for more details (and to confirm that the tests are still running). Given Yelp’s established audience this makes perfect sense for the company — I’d be surprised if they don’t deploy it more widely down the line. Update: Yelp has sent this statement: Yes we ran a short test in Sacramento. We’re always testing new things and if our users respond positively to deals from great businesses of course we’ll deliver that. Marketing programs that connect consumers with great businesses and awesome deals, have worked well for us in the past. Over the last couple of years we’ve hosted a number of marketing programs all across the US. (see list below) Portland is running Yelp Drinks as we speak. Examples: Yelp Eats (week-long promotion where we spotlight restaurants and work with them to offer special pre-fixe menu specials) Yelp Drinks (promotion to highlights local bars with drink specials) Hawt on Yelp (week long spa specials 50% off special services) In other Yelp-related news, earlier today Google rolled out a new Places application for Android that will be directly competing with Yelp’s directory of local reviews. | |
| Delta's SkyClub Site Reimagined To Be Less Barf Bag Worthy | Top |
| The airline industry is pretty much the worst offender in terms of being amenable to change, hence the large user experience holes filled by market distruptors like Virgin America , JetBlue , and Southwest . Aside from cloning Richard Branson or crossing your fingers in hopes that skunkworks will change things internally, what’s an old school airline executive to do? Part of the answer lies in paying attention to user suggestions, especially if they’re as elaborate as former Vimeo and College Humor founder and current Boxee CPO Zach Klein’s “one hour rethinking” of the Delta SkyClub complimentary wifi portal, a visualization he created and posted to Flickr while waiting for a flight out of Salt Lake City this morning (which probably should make the rest of us rethink how productively we use our commute times). As any traveler has seen, the landing pages for these hotel and airline wifi portals are usually irrelevant filler, hence the beauty in Klein’s reimagining; Why not fill them with useful personal information like the weather at your destination, your flight boarding time, upcoming travel and even geek stuff like the history of the airplane you’ll be traveling on, creating “a fairly simple page that is dramatically more valuable”? In case anyone was confused on how to serve up this info, Klein goes even further: “My idea is to require your frequent flyer mile number in order to access free WIFI (almost everyone in a lounge has a number) and perhaps even use my Delta.com cookie to autofill it.” We’ve seen unsolicited reimaginings of user interface design before, most notably UX Designer Dustin Curtis’ open letter to American Airlines about their homepage design, which received a “you are absolutely right” response from an anonymous American UX architect. While Delta hasn’t responded to Klein yet, I’m pretty sure another “you are absolutely right” is warranted here. Photo: Zach Klein/Flickr CrunchBase Information Boxee Zach Klein Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Glam Media Launches BrashSports As It Homes In On Male Audience | Top |
| Glam Media , the top-ranked women’s media network, is honing in on another target: men. This morning the company is launching BrashSports , a new content channel that encompasses a network of more than 25 sports-related properties, including SportsFanLive and Bloguin. The launch comes on the heels of Glam’s acquisition of sports media ad network Sportgenic last week. That deal was for Sportgenic’s ad platform AdPortal, which Glam is integrating into its own GlamAdapt platform to better compete with Google’s DoubleClick. Glam has historically offered properties that primarily cater to women (and has done quite well on that front), but since late 2008 it has also been targeting men with its Brash Network. Today’s launch grows that network significantly. Glam says that with the incorporation of the sports properties, its men’s newtork is now reaching over 30 million unique visitors a month in the United States. Glam says that this also leap-frogs them to the third most popular men’s site in the US, behind Yahoo! Sports sites (42 million uniques) and ESPN (30 million). CrunchBase Information Glam Media Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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