This continues our series of profiles of local-commerce companies. The purpose of these Q&A profiles is to give merchants, marketers and others in the industry a look at what some deal platforms out there are doing. These profiles are also meant to offer different perspectives on the future of the local-commerce industry. This week we’re […]

“Groupon Inc. is showing the risks of a young company shifting its business model — pivoting, to use techdom’s 2012 buzz word — and investors don’t like it.” As of around 11:15 a.m. EDT on Friday, GRPN is trading at $2.78, down 29.2 percent for the day and down 86.1 percent from its $20 IPO […]

Instagram introduced Web-based profile pages this week. While the rollout is currently limited to select users and brands, others will see their profile pages in the coming weeks. At first glance, this doesn’t seem like anything significant just yet

The realm of small-business online marketing doesn’t have the kinds of proven consumer behavior that brick-and-mortar retail businesses do. Norms are still forming. But here’s what is known: 73 percent of inbound leads are not sales-ready, and marketers place too much emphasis on generating leads while losing sight of the real goal. They overlook the […]

Pinterest has emerged as a very popular source of referral traffic

Groupon reported a net loss of $3 million, or zero cents per share, in the third quarter. While this marked an improvement from its net loss of $54.2 million in the same quarter last year, shares of GRPN plummeted in after-hours trading, as the company was expected to post revenue of $590 million, or 3 […]

Justin Bieber, Psy and, yes, even Rebecca Black have tasted varying forms of success on YouTube, the

Foursquare is the “ideal platform to bridge the gap between your offline and online audience in an affordable and scalable way.” While there are alternatives, Foursquare sits atop the mountain of location-based social apps, boasting 20 million users. It offers a way for businesses to build their customer base with new prospects while rewarding loyal […]

Question: Do you know what Twitter Cards are? Twitter is well-known by now, of course, but Twitter Cards aren’t. Twitter Cards are what meta tags are for Google and what Open Graph tags are for Facebook. Twitter says Twitter Cards enable marketers to “attach media experiences to Tweets that link to your content.” All it […]

Click-through rates aren’t always an accurate indicator of conversions or purchase intent for mobile ads