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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Angie’s List Faces Tougher Competition

Competition in the home services market is heating up. Not only tech giants like Amazon and Google appear interested in the market, but smaller vendors like Thumbtack are also growing rapidly. All this competition is making it difficult for established players like Angie’s List to stand their ground.

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No Respite for Yahoo Yet

Yahoo’s (Nasdaq: YHOO) results sound like a broken record now. The company continues to disappoint the market and keeps floundering around in the hope of finding a strategy that will work.

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Way to Go, Amazon

This quarter appears to be a record quarter for many. Google saw its stock soar to a record high driven by their impressive results and YouTube’s performance. Microsoft reported a record loss despite a booming cloud business. Even Apple delivered record performance on iPhone sales, but failed to deliver on financial metrics that has sent their stock tumbling. Etailer Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) broke several records. Surprisingly, the company announced a profitable quarter, sending the stock soaring high – so much that Amazon is now bigger than Walmart.

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Apple Fails to Deliver a Rosy Quarter

Earlier this year, the Apple Watch was released with much fanfare, but the customers are still to take to it the way they have taken to the prior iOS devices like iPhone or iPad. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) announced their quarterly results earlier this week which reflected the tepid response that the market had toward their Watch. Despite registering a record breaking quarter for iPhone revenues, Apple also fell short on market expectations on the number of units shipped.

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