'Net Features : wm-movers

Q1 Jobs Report Documents the Rise of E-Commerce

Michael Garrity — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Last week, Freelancer.com revealed the figures for what it found to be the 50 fastest growing online jobs for the first quarter of 2013. What the global outsourcing marketplace found was that the e-commerce industry continues to grow at an impressive rate, Android is starting to catch up with Apple, marketers are returning to the loving embrace of email over Twitter and Facebook and much more.

By analyzing 283,490 jobs during the quarter, Freelancer.com found that e-commerce is steadily dominating the “consumer retail landscape,” as other retail outlets with a brick-and-mortar presence are having trouble adjusting to a consumer base that is “no longer geographically captive.”

The e-commerce industry netted an impressive 19 percent increase in online jobs in Q1 2013, and as a result, e-commerce technologies have also been bringing in more employees. For example, shopping cart solution providers have increased jobs by 18 percent, while Magento, specifically, saw a 14 percent lift.

This has also spurred interest in Core Web 2.0 technologies, with an increased demand in jobs based around HTML5 (up 20 percent), CSS (15 percent), PHP (nine percent), jQuery (seven percent), MySQL (three percent) and WordPress (20 percent), largely because they allow e-commerce companies of all shapes and sizes to create mature, scalable online stores that “have all the feature of a massive retailer like Amazon” for a low price.

Elsewhere, in the mobile technology sector, Android jobs have gone up by over 20 percent, while iPad and iPhone-centric jobs only rose by 11 and five percent, respectively. This is primarily because Apple has had trouble penetrating the market in developing nations, which account for approximately 85 percent of the world’s population.

When it comes to social, Twitter has seen a nice boom, with jobs growing by 18 percent; this is significantly better than Facebook, for which jobs actually fell by four percent. However, both social networks have been taking a backseat when it comes to online marketers, who have been returning to email marketing as the primary way to drive customers to their websites. Email marketing jobs actually went up by 21 percent during the first quarter of this year.

On top of that, SEO jobs have been recovering from the industry's three percent slip in the fourth quarter of 2012, with SEO jobs rising by eight percent, and content based jobs like article submission or technical writing seeing increases of 54 and 26 percent, respectively.

Plus, 3D design jobs have been increasing steadily thanks to the introduction of 3D printers into the mainstream. 3D modeling jobs are up 21 percent, while 3D rendering jobs are up 13 percent and the 3D animation industry saw six percent growth.

Finally, back-office business process outsourcing (BPO) jobs saw a huge 113 percent increase in Q1, as small and enterprise-level companies, alike, have been outsourcing simple (and affordable) work to get ahead of the competition.

Mobile & Cloud, Top Trends for 2013

Michael Garrity — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 15:45:00 GMT

As the new year approaches, its time for small and medium-sized businesses to start getting connected to their customers in the cloud, as well as on mobile devices, according to a new trends report from cloud services solution provider j2 Global.

In compiling its report, the company found that mobility, cloud expansion and integrated business services will be “the three key trends that SMBs must be ready for in 2013.”

2011 saw a massive boon in smartphone sales – so much so that the mobile devices actually outsold PCs that year. That trend continued this year, and in 2013, j2 Global foresees companies getting more mobile-savvy, with mobile “tools” spanning industries, generations and job types and being leveraged for more than just basic communication needs.

j2 Global also points out that while many SMBs have long used smartphones and/or tablets for email and Web browsing, they must now start incorporating a wider array of other mobile business apps to increase their ability to stay connected and available and improve productivity. This can include workflow apps like mobile faxing or communication applications for VoIP calling, for example.

However, mobile isn’t the only major trend that SMBs need to adapt to as we rush into 2013. They’ll also have to start heading up into the cloud, as it provides various advantages for business owners, including faster deployment and a lower cost of ownership. And the good news for SMBs is that cloud-based technology provides a lowered cost of delivery and mobility, so they’ll save money in the long run.

The report predicts that cloud computing and As-a-Service technologies will soon become the default way that SMBs leverage technology, as they provide a lower barrier to entry, greater flexibility and virtual/remote capabilities and do away with the space and location restrictions that arise from on-premises solutions. Plus, these technologies will offers SMBs access to competitive, cost-effective and efficient advantages only available with the cloud. In fact, j2Gobal predicts that with the evolution of the cloud market, SMBs will adopt the tech more quickly, “putting at least 2 in 3 SMBs in the cloud in 2013.”

Finally, the company has discerned that integrated systems will become a much bigger part of SMB operations over the next year, as they provide greater efficiency through unified tools and systems that work collaboratively to drive results.

These fully integrated business solutions will begin to overtake disconnected systems throughout 2013. For example, email marketing will soon become one of the first applications to be completely integrated into CRM services, allowing sales and marketing teams to more easily execute campaigns and track the results from within a single application. Likewise, social capabilities will also become integrated into business platforms to help drive a faster sales cycle and lower acquisition costs; in addition, marketers will be able to manage social media campaigns more easily from their CRM services.

The new year is shaping up to be a banner year for SMBs, as long as they’re willing to adapt to and incorporate these emerging technologies into their operations. Mobile devices, integrated systems and the cloud are all going to play an increasingly bigger role in the way businesses operate over the next 12 months – is your company going to be ready?

Groupon Lands a Savory Platform

Allison Howen — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:45:00 GMT

Groupon is sinking its teeth into the restaurant industry with its recent acquisition of Savored, which is a platform that enables diners to make free online reservations and pay lower prices at restaurants across the United States.

After booking a reservation with Savored and visiting the restaurant, diners receive up to a 40 percent discount applied automatically to their bill. However, the service is also beneficial to merchants, because they are provided with increased revenue for tables that would otherwise be empty. To date, more than 1,000 restaurants nationwide have used Savored’s platform for yield management.

“Savored’s platform nicely complements Groupon’s efforts in yield management, an area we’ve pioneered with Groupon Now!,” said Dan Roarty, VP of Groupon Now. “We look forward to working together to achieve a common goal - making dining out even more fun and affordable for consumers while helping restaurateurs manage inventory and grow their businesses.”

Although the terms of the deal were not disclosed, it is important to note that Savored is currently continuing its service for diners and restaurants, and interested merchants can learn more about participating in Savored’s free 30-day trial here.

Hip to be Square with $200 Million

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:30:00 GMT

Payment technology and service provider Square has raised $200 million as part of a Series D round (bringing its total to an estimated $325 million) that included $25 million from Starbucks.

While backed by some big names including Visa and Chase, it will need much of that $200 million to quell the inevitable grand marketing push made by its equally well-funded competitors - we're looking at you Ebay and Google.

The funding, according to insiders, comes from Citi Ventures, Rizvi Traverse Management and the previously mentioned Starbucks. Square has seen incredibly rapid growth - 300 new employees - and accelerated use in the past year, powering over 8 billion in transactions.

Square is most certainly a disruptive force in the payments market. The company offers a reasonable 2.75% swipe fee, no additional fees, next-day deposits and the best part, a free card reader.

Trend Spotting (and Funding) with Dataminr

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:30:00 GMT

As if you needed it, here's a little more evidence that social media remains of great interest to the venture capital crowd these days (as it should be with the Web technology worker, too): social media analytics company Dataminr has secured $13 million to grow its client roster and drive further technology innovation in the Twitter-powered "sensor" network.

Dataminr provides an "earling warning" system of sorts that has been used primarily in the financial (big banks, hedge funds, wall street, et al) and government sectors to identify market-relevant information, noteworthy events, and emerging trends. Being able to mashup their own data set with raw data from Twitter proves incredibly valuble to these companies as their own viability is so closely connected to market demand and interest.

Dataminr is one of only a few social media analytics providers today that has full "firehose" access to Twitter, which affords the company the ability to analyze upwards of 400 million tweets per day in order to identify any activity hotspots. As Twitter tightens its control over its developer API, expect the likes of Dataminr and others to take center stage.

Privacy Comes to Mobile Ads

Allison Howen — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 02:09:00 GMT

Mobile ad network Jumptap has partnered with Evidon to fight for consumers’ rights to privacy.

The partnership between the two companies brings the AdChoices icon to in-app and mobile Web advertisements that use behavioral data to target consumers. Although the AdChoices icon is commonly seen in traditional online advertisements, Jumptap and Evidon created the first mobile AdChoices Icon privacy solution, which will be deployed through Evidon.

Through the partnership, Jumptap’s mobile ads will include the AdChoices icon in order to notify consumers when they are targeted with behavioral data. Once clicked, the icons direct consumers to Jumptap’s privacy overview page where they can discover more information about targeted mobile ads, as well as have the ability to update their privacy settings if desired.

“It all comes down to doing the right thing. The components of ‘Notice’ and ‘Choice’ allow us to bring innovative ad targeting features to market in a transparent way that leverage mobile and third party behavioral data at scale,” says Paran Johar, Chief Marketing Officer, Jumptap. “Jumptap provides choice via our opt-out capabilities. Our partnership with Evidon will ensure that notice is provided wherever we reach the consumer, on the mobile Web and in apps, and that our privacy experience will continue to be best in class as capabilities evolve.”

Box Scores Big in Latest Round of Funding

Michael Garrity — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:35:00 GMT

The cloud computing industry is dominated by a few big names – Amazon, VMware, NetSuite, Salesforce, Dropbox, and, of course, Google always seem to take over the majority of the conversation.

However, somewhat quietly in the background, Box has been carving out its own space. The company offers simple and secure online file sharing, centralizes mobile data for customers, offers social workflow features for cloud collaboration, possesses the ability to cross-platform sync content for enterprise organizations, and even has customization options that make it compatible with a customer’s existing cloud infrastructure and applications.

It’s no wonder that major brand names like Clear Channel, Taylor Made, Procter & Gamble, and over 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies have adopted the Box platform.

And it looks like the company may soon be able to expand even further, as it just raised a startling $125 million in funding, led primarily by the General Atlantic investment firm. Other contributors were Bessemer Venture Partners, DFJ Growth, New Enterprise Associates, SAP Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, and Social+Capital.

Box has been experiencing record growth for some time now, with sales increasing by 200 percent year-over-year. In fact, the company doubled in average size during the first half of 2012. It also opened an office in London recently, which signifies a committed interest in expanding globally. With this huge increase in funding, it’ll be exciting to see what the company does next, and if it can propel itself into the upper echelon of cloud service providers.

ValueClick Exceeds Expectations

Pete Prestipino — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Digital marketing provider ValueClick, whose brand lineup includes such notable Web names as Commission Junction, GretyStripe, Dotomi, PriceRunner and others, announced its second quarter 2012 results this week.

Adjusted-EBITDA and earnings per share metrics, as well as revenue (29 percent increase from the second quarter for a total of $161 million) all exceeded the high-end of the previously issued guidance ranges.

"We delivered another quarter of strong financial results, while further leveraging our unique data, traffic and services capabilities to become a more strategic partner for our clients," said James R. Zarley, chief executive officer of ValueClick. "As illustrated in our share repurchase activity, we remain confident in our ability to become the partner of choice for the largest, most sophisticated digital advertisers and capitalize on the growth opportunities in our industry."

Google Catches Fire in Social Media

Allison Howen — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 16:00:00 GMT

Google is getting even more serious about social.

The search engine giant recently announced its acquisition of Wildfire, a popular social media marketing platform. The ultimate goal of this acquisition, according to Google’s blog, is to help businesses create better and fresher content, as well as generate more meaningful interactions.

“With Wildfire, we’re looking forward to creating new opportunities for our clients to engage with people across all social services,” states the blog. “We believe that better content and more seamless solutions will help unlock the full potential of the web for people and businesses.”

It is also important to note that Wildfire's current clients won't see any changes to their service. Wildfire's blog states that for now, the company will remain focused on helping brands run and measure their social engagement and ad campaigns across the entire web and all social services – including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

Facebook Earnings Call Highlights

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 07:30:00 GMT

Facebook held its first earnings call last week to report financial results for the second quarter ending June 30, 2012. Highlights of the earning call are below.

Revenue for the second quarter totaled $1.18 billion, an increase of 32%, compared with $895 million in the second quarter of 2011. Second quarter costs and expenses were $1.93 billion, an increase of 295% from the second quarter of 2011, driven primarily by share-based compensation expense.

• Monthly active users (MAUs) were 955 million as of June 30, 2012, an increase of 29% year-over-year.
• Daily active users (DAUs) were 552 million on average for June 2012, an increase of 32% year-over-year.
• Mobile MAUs were 543 million as of June 30, 2012, an increase of 67% year-over-year.

"Our goal is to help every person stay connected and every product they use be a great social experience," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "That's why we're so focused on investing in our priorities of mobile, platform and social ads to help people have these experiences with their friends."

Akamai 2Q Revenue $331 Million

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 07:00:00 GMT

Content delivery platform Akamai reported revenue for the second quarter of 2012 was $331 million, a 20 percent increase over second quarter 2011 revenue of $277 million.

Net income for the second quarter of 2012 was $44 million, or $0.24 per diluted share, an 8 percent decrease from second quarter 2011 GAAP net income of $48 million, or $0.25 per diluted share, and a 2 percent increase from first quarter 2012 GAAP net income of $43 million, or $0.24 per diluted share.

The Company generated normalized net income* of $78 million, or $0.43 per diluted share, in the second quarter of 2012, an 18 percent increase over second quarter 2011 normalized net income of $66 million, or $0.35 per diluted share, and a 3 percent increase from the prior quarter normalized net income of $75 million, or $0.41 per diluted share. (*See Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures below for definitions.)

“Akamai’s very strong second quarter results were driven on the top line by increased adoption of our cloud infrastructure solutions as well as continued growth of content delivery solutions,” said Paul Sagan, President and CEO of Akamai. “Our bottom line performance was the result of significant benefits we have begun to realize from improvements we are making to scale our network operations.”

Amazon Sales Up 29% to $12.83 Billion

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 06:30:00 GMT

Amazon had quite the second quarter based on its most recent financial results. Net sales for the company increased 29% to $12.83 billion in the second quarter, compared with $9.91 billion in second quarter 2011.

Numerous highlights were discussed in the recent earnings call, including:

- Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since launch. Over this same period, the top 10 selling items on Amazon.com were digital products – Kindle, Kindle books, and accessories.

- Worldwide Electronics and Other General Merchandise sales grew 38% to $8.16 billion. Excluding the unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 42%.

- AWS relaunched AWS Support with the expansion of free support for all AWS customers, a reduction in pricing on premium support plans and adding multiple new features to help customers better interact with and improve their use of AWS, including chat functionality and proactive alerts when opportunities exist to save money, improve system performance, or close security gaps.

Best Quarter Ever for Netsuite

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Cloud-based financial/ERP software provider NetSuite announced operating results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2012.

Total revenue for the second quarter of 2012 was $74.7 million, representing a 29% increase over the same period in the prior year. Subscription and support revenue for the second quarter of 2012 was $61.0 million, representing a 27% increase over the same period in the prior year.

"In a quarter that saw many enterprise software companies struggle, NetSuite had one of its best quarters ever. We saw continued improvements across our financial metrics and exceeded our previously stated outlook on revenue, cash flow and non-GAAP EPS significantly. And the continued execution against our core strategies allows us to increase our full-year outlook for revenue and non-GAAP EPS," said NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson.

Former Yahoo! CEO Lands at ShopRunner

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 19:30:00 GMT

Former Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson is now the CEO of ShopRunner, a service that hopes it can help retailers compete with Amazon Prime.

ShopRunner is a service that allows users, for $79/annually or $8.95/monthly, to pick up packages at retail store locations. Founded 22 months ago as an offshoot of GSI Commerce (the service was spun off last year when eBay bough GSI) now counts some very big names in the world of retail including Toys R Us, Petsmart, Lord & Taylor, GNC and Drugstore.com to name a few.

Thompson will likely focus on the growth of its partner roster, but will also need to oversee the expansion of its offerings for participating merchants, and its benefits to members - for example, Shoprunner will soon release a two-click checkout experience dubbed PayRunner, and ShopRunner PickupPoints, a service that gives members the option to have packages delivered to retail store locations.

“Joining ShopRunner is a tremendous opportunity to build on the strong foundation that the company has already established,” said Scott Thompson. “While PayPal and ShopRunner are fundamentally different businesses, there are similarities in each of their success. Both companies are focused on building the broadest network of satisfied merchants by providing the value that creates a large and loyal customer community, creating a virtuous circle.”

“Mike Golden has built a great foundation with ShopRunner and we both agreed that it is the perfect time to bring in Scott, who we have gotten to know extremely well over the past few years,” said Michael Rubin, CEO of Kynetic, a majority shareholder of ShopRunner. “Scott’s deep understanding of online businesses combined with his team building, operational capabilities, and focus on product will allow ShopRunner to realize its ultimate potential.”

ShopRunner will be expanding its offerings, both in its breadth of participating merchants, and its benefits to members, including PayRunner, a two-click checkout experience that makes it fast and convenient for ShopRunner members to purchase, and ShopRunner PickupPoints – a service that gives

Fab, TaskRabbit and Mashery Get (MORE) Funding

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:17:00 GMT

It’s good to wake on a Monday morning to some fresh and relevant funding news, am I right?

Here’s what happening today amongst you digital Movers and Shakers.

FAB.com Raises $100+ Million
Flash-sales retailer Fab.com raised $105 million in a Series C funding round led by VC firm Atomico. Fab, which launched in 2011, currently offers over 10,000 products each day.

TaskRabbit Raises $13 Million
Labor-marketplace TaskRabbit raised $13 million in a Series C funding ounrd led by the Founders Fund. The funding round brings the startup’s total funding to $38 million.

Mashery Raises $10 Million
API management platform Mashery raised $10 million in fund led by Openview Venture Partners and others including Cisco, Formative Ventures, First Round Capital and .406 Ventures.