LivingSocial Experiments with Diverse Services and Business Models

Most of the recently listed Internet stocks have taken a beating. Daily deals site Groupon saw its stock fall more than 60% since its IPO in November 2011. The prevailing market conditions have forced Groupon’s competitor LivingSocial to revisit IPO plans. Analysts believe that the Internet deal market in the U.S. will grow to $4.17 billion in U.S., up from $1.97 billion recorded last year. Despite these rosy projections, LivingSocial is now not eying an IPO on the Nasdaq until next year.

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Yelp to Get Help From Siri

Analysts believe that local advertising markets in the U.S. were worth a total of $130 billion last year and project that number to grow to more than $150 billion by the year 2015. A BIA Kelsey report suggest that for several years, much of this market was not catered to by digital players. But that trend is changing, as is evident from this chart below, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.

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ADP and Paychex Chug Along Amidst Uninspiring Jobs Numbers

According to market reports, U.S. companies added more jobs than expected in July. More than 163,000 jobs were added by U.S. companies, which was marginally less than the 172,000 jobs added in June of this year. A survey conducted by Bloomberg of 38 economists was projecting job growth of 75,000-180,000 during the month. Increased job opportunities were a positive sign for payroll processing firms, helping them to meet market expectations.

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ServiceNow’s Solid Start Will Faciliate Growth in the U.S. and Abroad

Like LinkedIn, recently listed IT service management (ITSM) provider, ServiceNow is a bright spot among publicly traded tech names. Here’s a quick update following our coverage earlier in the summer. The company recently announced quarterly results, and despite reporting a loss in the quarter, its stock seems to be doing well.

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LinkedIn Monetization Strategy Best Among Social Networks

Social media stocks may be taking a beating, but the world’s biggest online professional network, LinkedIn, is faring rather well. According to comScore, this June, LinkedIn reported 131 million unique visitors, making the site the 26th most visited web property in the world. During the previous quarter, LinkedIn generated 9.3 billion page views to report growth of 31% over the year.

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TaskRabbit Provides Livelihood for Some

In February 2008, Cambridge, Massachusetts–based Leah Busque struck gold when she came up with an idea of an online marketplace that one could visit to run her errands. The site began under the name RunMyErrand.com, with funding from angel investors. It was created as an eBay-like service where users could put up tasks that they wanted done, and service providers could bid for those tasks.

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Zynga’s Steady Decline in Stock Price

According to recent data, social online gaming appears to be slowing down. Not only is user engagement dropping, but the money spent on these games is also decreasing. A survey by researcher Frank N. Magid Associates revealed that on average players planned to spend $51 on games this year, compared with $78 last year.  The growth of online social games has slowed considerably, with 38% of social media users now playing games on the networks, compared with 36% a year ago. Another report on Facebook by IHS iSuppli said that last year, Facebook saw a significant decline in the number of Facebook gamers. In 2010, half of Facebook’s monthly active users were gamers, and that number fell to 25% by 2011. Online gaming developer Zynga is already feeling the heat.

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Facebook Stock Out of Favor

According to eMarketer, Facebook claims the biggest online display advertising market revenues from the U.S. after overtaking Yahoo last year. This year, Facebook is expected to account for 16.8% of the U.S. online display advertising market share. Google is projected to have 16.5% of the market share compared with 13.8% last year, and Yahoo’s share is expected to fall from 10.8% last year to 9.1% this year. But the growing market share is not helping Facebook’s stock price performance.

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Netflix Tumbling Downhill

Not a lot is going Netflix’s way at the moment. Despite meeting analyst expectations last quarter, the company’s disappointing subscriber growth and continued losses projected for the current quarter sent the stock tumbling. >>>

Amazon’s Fulfillment Center Investments Aimed To Corner More Market Share

There is little question that Amazon has redefined the e-tail industry. According to a recent study by Forrester, Why Amazon Matters Now More Than Ever, Amazon is a leading source of research for online buyers. The report claims that 30% of online buyers use Amazon to research products first, compared with 13% of buyers who use Google. Forrester estimates that Amazon’s share in the U.S. e-commerce revenues grew from 9% in 2001 to 19% in 2011. Amazon plans to increase its footprint and is investing heavily to ensure this growth continues.

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