End of the Rough Patch for Zillow?

The online realty sector has seen significant consolidation over the past year with Zillow acquiring Trulia and Move acquired by News Corp. With the Trulia acquisition running into delays over the anti-trust violation probe, Zillow looked gloomy. The company recently recorded a better-than expected quarter and encouraging progress on the Trulia integration. >>>

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Zulily Attempts to Make a Turnaround

Billion Dollar Unicorn club member and online niche flash sales site Zulily (Nasdaq: ZU) appears to be making a slow turnaround according to recent quarter results. The stock’s performance has been rather weak of late and it had entered the list of the Wall Street’s worst performing stocks for 2015 after having dropped 47% during the year. Their recent moves suggest that things may improve in the future.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Zendesk and Freshdesk in Expansion Mode

According to a recent Gartner report, the global customer relationship management (CRM) software market is estimated to have grown to $23.2 billion in 2014, up 13.3% from $20.4 billion in 2013. SaaS accounted for almost 47% of the market driven by organizations of all sizes looking for easier-to-deploy and faster-ROI alternatives to modernizing legacy systems, implementing new applications, or providing alternative complementary functionality. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Zendesk as well as rival Freshdesk are the new generation players riding on this trend. >>>

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Expect Acquisitions From ServiceNow

According to Gartner, the IT operations management (ITOM) software market grew 7% to reach nearly $21 billion in 2014. The ITOM landscape is undergoing transformation as legacy multi-segment players give way to a new generation of suppliers that are growing more rapidly than the market average. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) is one such new player in the IT Services Management (ITSM) segment of the ITOM market. >>>

LinkedIn Stock Tumbles

After delivering some strong quarterly results, LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) seems to be struggling in growing their core business. While overall results and projections were better than expectations, the market was not so happy considering that a bulk of that improvement is attributed to LinkedIn’s earlier acquisition of Lynda.com. Post announcement of the results, the stock fell 10%. I still believe that LinkedIn is one of the smartest companies around today and I am confident their moves will prove the same in time.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Coinbase Tries To Capitalize on BitCoins

According to recent market reports, there are close to 14.5 million Bitcoins in circulation globally. Users have completed over 75 million transactions using these new coins. Bitcoin’s ability to scale further depends on increased consumer confidence and the development of secure services around this currency. Billion Dollar Unicorn status hopeful San Francisco-based Coinbase is helping create an environment to facilitate trading with Bitcoins.

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Carnival in the Cloud: Taulia Innovates in Supplier Management and Invoicing

A TechNavio report forecasts the global e-invoicing market to grow 24.2% annually over the period 2012 through 2016. The growth in the market was attributed to the increased adoption of these services by small and medium enterprises and the continued focus on reduction of operational costs. San Francisco-based Taulia is one such fast growing company that has gone beyond simple invoicing to encompass an impressive vendor management offering.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Rapid7 Delivers a Successful IPO

A recent MarketsandMarkets report projects the global cybersecurity market to grow 10% annually from $106.32 billion this year to $170.21 billion by the year 2020. The researcher reveals that while North America will be the largest market for the industry, the growth will actually be driven by the Latin American and Asia Pacific markets. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Rapid7 is a recently listed player in this industry.

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Facebook Delivering Strong Advertising Growth

According to a report by media agency Carat, the global advertising market is projected to grow 4.6% this year to $540 billion. The growth will be driven by increased spending on digital media which is projected to grow 15.7% this year. Overall digital media is expected to account for 24% of advertising market spend for the year. The researcher projects mobile advertising to grow 50% this year and video advertising to grow 22% over the year. Social media giant Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) is using impressive moves to deliver in this high growth market.

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Twitter Fails to Recover

According to a recent report published by the Business Insider, the global online video ad revenues are projected to grow from 2.8 billion in 2013 to $5 billion in 2016. Video ads with a 1.84% click-through rate (CTR) ranks the highest among all digital ad formats. Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter are both embracing these video ads to drive revenues higher. Online advertising giant Google is already successfully leveraging this video growth as was evident from YouTube’s blow out quarter reported earlier.

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