Asana Positioning Itself to Reach Ultimate Goal of $100 Billion in Revenue

A recent report by GIA projects the global cloud-based office productivity software market to be worth $16.56 billion by 2018. The researcher estimates that growth will be driven by increased adoption of these tools by small and medium businesses and Asia-Pacific markets. Menlo Park, California–based Asana was founded in 2008 by former Facebook employees Justin Rosenstein and Dustin Moskovitz. The company is becoming a strong contender in the market segment.

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Box Eyes IPO At Unrealistic Valuation

Within the cloud computing segment, enterprise content management (ECM) is a fast-growth industry. Gartner projects that the ECM market will grow at a compounded rate of 10.1% annually to more than $5.7 billion by 2014.  Another report by researcher The Radicati Group projects that by 2016, the market will be worth $7.5 billion. Big names in the market include IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. But smaller players, such as California-based Box, are also making it big.

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More Fliers Not Translating to Higher Revenues for Online Travel Players

According to a report by the International Air Transport Association, global airline traffic grew 6.2% over the year in June 2012. But the agency expects traffic to slow in the coming quarters owing to the continuing European crisis. The depressed European market has hurt several online travel companies, which have lowered their outlooks for the current quarter.

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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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