Gilt Groupe Sees Gold In Diversification And Overseas Expansion

Flash sales sites shot to attention after a spate of acquisitions announced over the past few months. Earlier this year, Nordstrom bought HauteLook for $270 million. Last year end, e-tailing giant Amazon also ventured into the market when it bought the members-only site BuyVIP for $96.5 million. The global market in luxury flash sales is led by the French company Vente Privée, which is projected to record sales of over $1.5 billion this year. Within the U.S. though, the market is led by New York–based Gilt Groupe, which has managed to stay independent thus far.

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Oracle To Avoid Large Acquisitions

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) last week reported strong results driven by its software business. Hardware sales were below expectations and raised investor concerns about the integration of the Sun acquisition. However, Oracle said that these results reflected its decision to go after profit rather than revenue. CEO Larry Ellison also said that Oracle would be focusing more on organic growth. Let’s take a closer look.

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Tumblr Struggles With Monetization

Founded by David Karp in New York City in 2007, tumblr is a micro-blogging platform that has re-envisioned the interface of traditional blogging by aggregating posts from different blogs and giving them a fun visual navigation through quick, mixed-media posts. Tumblr has simplified the effort required in sites like WordPress for blog creation and also added features that are not possible in much simpler micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter. Below is a brief overview on this blogging site, which now hosts more blogs than the veteran player, WordPress.

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Zynga’s Thought Leadership In Immersive Advertising

Besides Yelp, Zynga is another online player that appears to be waiting to cash in on the IPO market. Analysts expect Zynga to file for an IPO by the end of this month. Meanwhile, the company is busy launching new games and creating attractive marketing tie-ups in the entertainment industry.

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New Products At Google And Facebook Put The Ball In Yelp’s Court

Till now, the online local listings player, Yelp.com, has successfully managed to avoid Google’s buy-out overtures and other competition while remaining a private player. This may change. After declaring their intentions last year to stay private, Yelp has finally started evaluating the option of going public. According to management, an IPO now will give the company the best valuation. They still have not finalized their intentions and have not yet filed the requisite documents with the SEC. But Yelp has begun to prepare for the IPO by scouting the market for a CFO with public company experience.

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Revenue Sharing A Good Strategy For Zillow

The real estate market in the U.S. does not seem to be on the verge of any recovery. In a survey conducted by Trulia and RealtyTrac.com of 2,018 homeowners across the country in April of this year, 54% of the surveyed population believes that the housing market recovery will take another two and a half years. The sentiment is reflected in declining home prices, which fell 3% sequentially last quarter, the largest quarterly drop since Q4 2008.  The National Association of Realtors also reported that existing home sales fell 0.8% over the previous month to 5.09 million in April, and the U.S. Department of Commerce reported that new home starts fell 10.6% from March to April. But that has not stopped online real estate portal Zillow.com from filing for an IPO listing scheduled to raise $51.75 million later this year.

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Lack Of New Model Drags On iPhone Sales At Verizon

There were high expectations from the Verizon iPhone, awaited with great eagerness. Though it did lead to strong first quarter results for Verizon, the phone’s release on Verizon hasn’t affected AT&T as much as it was expected to. AT&T sold 3.6 million iPhones, up by a million, with iPhone churn unchanged, while Verizon sold 2.2 million iPhones. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

LivingSocial Monetizing Splendidly

Earlier this month, Groupon’s IPO news was accompanied by market’s revised valuation assessments pegging the company to be worth $30 billion. I believe that their highly unprofitable performance may bring their valuations down to more realistic levels. But, one cannot deny the strength of their business model that has helped them to achieve such fast-paced revenue growth. And it is not just Groupon. Their model of revenue sharing with merchants has also been successfully adapted by their competitor LivingSocial, which too now boasts significantly higher revenues.

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For-Profit Education Sector Taking Huge Hit

The for-profit educational sector continued to face tighter scrutiny amid high student loan default rates, high interest rates, big debts, and accusations of “deceptive marketing practices.” Recently, the Department of Education (DoE) announced its final interpretation of the rule of gainful employment, which were less severe than anticipated. The new rules are aimed at protecting both students and taxpayers by regulating the federal aid provided to for-profit colleges. The DoE estimates that students at for-profit institutions account for 12% of all higher education students yet contribute to 26% of all student loans and 46% of all student loan dollars in default. According to the new rules, for schools to qualify for federal student aid, they have to ensure a minimum of 35% of their students repay loans and that loan payments constitute up to 30% of the former student’s discretionary income or 12% of their annual income. The DoE expects 18% of for-profit schools’ programs to fail this litmus test at some point, and 5% of programs to lose eligibility under the new law. The stricter rules have already translated to stringent enrolment norms being incorporated by for-profit schools. As enrollment figures tighten, some schools’ financial performance has also wavered.

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Twitter Sharpens Focus On Monetization

A lot has been happening with the best-known microblogging service, Twitter, of late. There was speculation that the company was going to be a $8 billion to $10 billion acquisition target for Google and Facebook early this year. That hasn’t happened, but Twitter has been busy acquiring third party Twitter application TweetDeck and advertising company AdGrok. And that is not all – Apple has decided to integrate Twitter deeply into iOS5 when it releases the operating system later this fall.

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