MANHATTAN — The Street Fight Summit in SoHo ended Wednesday not in fisticuffs but with thoughts on the future of hyperlocal news websites and location-driven businesses and services such as Groupon, Foursquare and Patch.com.
The two-day industry conference at 82 Mercer St. in SoHo gathered more than 50 leaders from the growing fields of hyperlocal news, "daily deals" and location-based websites and applications. Participants included DNAinfo.com, AOL Local, Curbed and Meetup.
Street Fight Magazine created their first annual conference to help industry leaders check in on the future of hyperlocal companies, discuss new ways to generate revenue and exchange best practices, according to its website.
Members of conference panels discussed the size of hyperlocal publishers, lessons from unsuccessful companies and unconventional revenue models.
Street Fight's online magazine launched in April to create a hub for hyperlocal thinkers and entrepreneurs, the site's editors wrote on April 13.
"We aim to be a central resource for ideas about sustainable business models for the hyperlocal news, information and advertising efforts," they wrote.
Street Fight cites industry titan Groupon, which is valued at an estimated $10 billion, as one sign of the growth and potential of the hyperlocal industry.
One-in-five Internet searches and one-in-three mobile searches are location-based, Google sales executive Ben Wood said in March, according to the local digital media website NetNewsCheck.
