Handybook Rebrands As Handy, Says It Grew 10x in Past 9 Months

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New York-based Handybook, which allows users to book pre-approved home service providers through a mobile app or website, is dropping the “book” from its name, rebranding as Handy to avoid confusion with — well — books. The company’s chief executive Oisin Hanrahan believes the move will help the company develop the type of brand that has helped to propel Uber and Airbnb into multi-billion dollar companies.

Signpost Adds Payment Integration as Small Business CRM Market Grows

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Signpost, a New York-based startup that got its start selling deals software to small business, wants to expand deeper into maybe the most important sources of data in the front-office: payments. The company has rolled out a new product that can programmatically pull customer information from a phone call or credit card swipe, and then send text messages or emails to those people with offers or requests for reviews…

Apple Made Its Move into Payments — Here’s What’s Next

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Apple announced its long-awaited payments product on Tuesday, opening the door for a range of new innovations in local tech. Here are four locally focused companies that have already started working on products to dovetail with the platform…

Apple’s Big Day: What It Means for Local Tech

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It’s that time again. After plenty of buzz, Apple is set to release several new products amidst the usual pomp and circumstance. Here’s a look at how all of Apple’ expected announcements might impact the way local is done…

Forrester: Attribution Still Holding Back Spending in Mobile Advertising

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A new report from 4INFO, Acxiom and Forrester says that a lack of confidence among marketers in the ability to measure effectiveness and return on investment might be holding back the growth of cross-channel advertising…

Report: Mobile Context and Location Services Market to Reach $43.3 Billion by 2019

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The mobile context and location services market is set to reach $43.3 billion by 2019, according to a new report. That’s up from an estimated $12.2 billion in 2014. The report also found that by 2019, more than two-thirds of revenues will be driven through highly targeted and contextually aware ad-supported apps…

Study: Facebook Is Most Effective Social Media Site for Small Business

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A new study from G/O Digital, the digital marketing wing of Gannett, finds that consumers tend to use Facebook for product research more than any other social media outlet. The study found that 68% of respondents prefer checking reviews of Facebook, compared to 11% on Twitter and 12% on Pinterest.

Hyperlocal Companies Among 500 Startups’ Latest Batch

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Silicon Valley seed fund 500 Startups has announced a new round of startups it will be helping navigate through the tough road to sustainable profitability — and they include a number of brand new companies in local commerce, marketing, and tech. Here are a few interesting hyperlocally focused companies from the latest batch…

Daily Voice Expands Into Roger Ailes’ Territory

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The Daily Voice has expanded to Putnam County in the Lower Hudson Valley, creating the regional corporate network’s 42nd site in the affluent suburban New York-Connecticut market. Tucker said Putnam Daily Voice’ was launched “with zero expansion” of staff, which includes eight reporters covering a number of communities in the New York-Connecticut suburbs…

10 Years in, Yelp Turns a Profit

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Yelp is now in the black. The company beat analysts’ expectations, reporting better-than-expected revenues Wednesday with strong top-line growth and a million dollars in profit for the first time in its history…

Study: Consumers Increasingly Receptive to Mobile Ads

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A new study released by xAd and Telmetrics finds that consumer engagement with mobile ads has increased dramatically over the past few years. Nearly 50% of mobile shoppers said that they found mobile ads informative/helpful — up from 22% in 2013. In addition, nearly half of respondents who clicked on mobile ads said they went on to take secondary actions (like viewing a website or searching for additional information)…

Apple Will Beef Up Privacy in iOS 8 — Here’s What It Means for Local

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When Apple unveiled iOS 8 last month, only brief mentions were made of iBeacon, the company’s much-hyped proximity messaging protocol. But early versions of the software released to developers in July suggest that the forthcoming operating system could include changes with implications for stakeholders across the commerce, advertising, and retail technology industries…

Three Months After IPO, Grubhub is Growing — And Profitable

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Shares of the company rose 4% Thursday morning as the online ordering firm reported solid revenue growth, and a stronger-than-expected jump in profit during its first full quarter as a public company…

Study: The Problem With Mobile Payments Isn’t Awareness — It’s Utility

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A new study from Thrive Analytics shows that the sluggish growth of mobile wallet initiatives is largely a product — not a marketing — problem. Among the 32% of respondents who used a wallet app, usage was, for the most part, intermittent…

POS Startup Shows Cashiers Pictures of Customers Who Check-in

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Revel Systems, a San Francisco-based company that makes point-of-sale software, will now notify businesses when someone has checked-in to their venue on Yelp or Foursquare. The feature offers a way to help businesses take a more proactive approach to engaging a vocal minority of users who actively share their opinions…

What Booker’s New Partnership Says About GrubHub’s Future

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Booker has announced a new partnership with Como to use the firm’s technology to allow businesses to instantly generate a customized consumer-facing mobile application with full booking capability. The move offers an insight into how back-office software companies could undercut commerce companies like Grubhub…

Placed Raises $10M to Help Mobile Advertisers Ditch Clicks

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A hedge fund has led a $10 million series B investment in Placed, a location analytics firm that uses Nielsen-like panels to help advertisers measure the effectiveness of advertising in the physical world. The funding highlights the growing demand by stakeholders in the mobile marketing industry to move beyond the click-through-rate by measuring the performance of digital advertising offline…

JiWire Rebrands as NinthDecimal to Focus on Data Business

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JiWire has rebranded as NinthDecimal as it looks to compete in an increasingly crowded mobile advertising technology sector by highlighting its data business. The move underscores the importance of consumer data in the way advertisers buy audiences online, and subsequent decline of media as the currency of online advertising…

Watch Out Yelp and Foursquare — Facebook Starts Flexing Its Local Muscles Again

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During a presentation at Internet Week in New York on Thursday, Justin Moore, an engineering manager at Facebook, offered a full-throated pitch for the company’s local data initiatives. Moore, a former Foursquare engineer who joined Facebook in early 2012, says a team in the company’s New York office has spent the past two years turning the 32 billion pieces of location-tagged content, which have been created on the social network, into a sprawling database of places that spans the globe…

Consumers Are Using Cash Less — And That’s a Good Sign for Digital Marketers

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A report by Javelin Research found that in-store cash sales in the U.S. dropped from $874 billion in 2012 to $788 million last year — a 10% decline. Over the next five years, the report projects that consumers will spend $100 billion less with cash, opting instead to pay using credit and debit cards as well as still-nascent mobile payment systems…