WhatsApp Users double within a year

Active users of Whatsapp, the cross-platform mobile-messaging app, have grown from 200 million in April 2013 to 430 million according to WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum.
This is the fastest growth in usage seen in a messaging app in recent years.

In this increasingly popular environment of Private messaging dominated by social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, WhatsApp continues to hold its own. The number of messages sent and received via whatsapp have more than doubled from 20 billion per day to 50 billion per day.

Statista's chart, below, shows the progression of WhatsApp's active user base and daily-message volume over the past 10 months.

Amazon, the next Walmart

Amazon.com is the best-loved company in America, despite being very similar to one of the least-loved companies in America: Walmart.

The Internet megastore had the best public image of any U.S. company in 2013, according to a study released on Monday by YouGov, a market-research firm based in the U.K. YouGov surveyed about 1.2 million people online over the course of 2013 to come up with its rankings, which confirm earlier research: A Harris Interactive poll released in March scored Amazon with the best reputation among large U.S. corporations.

In the Harris poll, Walmart ranked 40th out of 60 total companies, toward the back of the pack with oil drillers and wireless carriers. YouGov only ranked the top 25 U.S. companies, and Walmart did not make that list. YouGov also broke down the five highest-rated discount retailers: Amazon topped that list, too, while Walmart did not appear.

In fact, many people despise Walmart, and have for years, as a torrent of bad press has weighed on its public image. Walmart's bad rep began when it systematically squashed family-owned shops during its rapid national expansion in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Since then, Walmart has endured a wave of lawsuits from workers accusing the retailer of gender discrimination, poor health care and wage theft.

Amazon, on the other hand, is loved for the breadth of its inventory and the ease of using its website. People love its convenience.

Yet the closer you look, the more Amazon begins to look like Walmart. Working conditions at the warehouses that make magical same-day delivery possible are starting to get scrutiny. In recent years, there have been media reports of warehouse workers fainting from heat exhaustion, with air-conditioning installed only many months later. Some U.S. employees are suing, claiming that they have not been paid for work or that Amazon employs tactics to avoid paying unemployment benefits. German colleagues went on strike over Christmas.

And while Walmart crushed its smaller competition, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos can be just as ruthless against upstart online stores. According to the new book "The Everything Store" by Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Brad Stone, Bezos tried to buy Diapers.com in 2009. When rebuffed, Amazon warned the co-founders that it would get into the diaper business. Soon after, Amazon undercut Diapers.com's prices. When Walmart later made an offer to buy the site, Amazon reps warned the startup that Bezos “was such a furious competitor that he would drive diaper prices to zero if they sold to Bentonville.”

Yahoo COO Henrique de Castro is leaving

Yahoo COO Henrique de Castro will be leaving Yahoo, effective January 16, according to Yahoo.
De Castro was the first major hire by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.
In 2012, Yahoo's board had such high hopes for Henrique de Castro that it paid him more than his boss, Marissa Mayer. Little more than a year later, he is gone, fired from his job as Mayer's No. 2 after a disappointing performance.
All told, de Castro will walk away with at least $88 million.

Facebook Shares Buying Is Wise Only If It Replicates Google

Facebook Incorporated has shown a tremendous growth in its market value as its share price roughly doubled. The company has shown an increase in the market value in a pretty short time as compared to any other large company.

In June, the stock of this social media biggie finished at $24.88 and it had the market value of over $60 billion. The third quarter ended with a share of $50.23 and the market value of this giant went up to a whopping $122 billion. The shares have shown a significant growth from here.

The Standard& Poor’s Indexes and S&P Capial IQ, conducted historical screens and it was discovered that only twice in a generation or in the history, has a company started off with a market value of at least $40 billion.

Yahoo Inc.  had doubled to more than $110 billion in the last few months of 1999, as an expectation that the company would be added to the S&P 500 served as an afterburner to the already break-neck speculative momentum in Internet stocks. In that same period, Oracle Corp. (ORCL) more than doubled in value off a similarly large base.

There are no other big companies which have achieved such a speedy growth. Companies like Apple Inc., Amazon.com, LinkedIn or Netflix Inc, which are giant corporations haven’t managed the same accelerated growth either.

What actually happened?

Well, people were highly skeptical if Facebook could really be able to command so much of users’ time and attention. And this attention was required, not just over the computers or laptops but majorly over mobile phones. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of this social media website was not sure and hadn’t really persuaded Wall Street if he wanted to produce investor-friendly financial results in the near term. However, last year’s report showed enough evidence with a good grip on mobile ads and this put a stop to any more fears of whether Facebook could stay in the business or not.  

There were mechanical factors to be considered as well. The company has a relatively small amount of shares which are freely floating with founders and the investors control about 40%. The whole sector has been able to move forward with the help of money managers, who had an urgency to gain exposure to a relatively limited amount of social-media-stock supply.

Because the company has a room for rapid growth overseas and has a lot of room for more users, it is a much profitable company. This year, it is all set to earn about $2 billion on more than $7 billion in revenue. The top line looks for more than 40% growth from the previous year and an excess of 30% annually this year.

The Google experience

The size of Facebook and IPO experience, match perfectly. In 2004, when Google came out in public, it faced a lot of skeptical attitude towards its financial opportunities and valuations.

What to make of the fact that sentiment flipped so dramatically? Can such a change of heart by the market be taken as a reliable verdict? Being aggressively bullish on Facebook at its current price is implicitly a bet that it will replicate the growth and near-flawless strategic execution of Google Inc. (GOOG), the most successful, dominant, industry-defining company of the past decade. The consensus on Google ran something like this: A quirky management team running a company with a silly name that could easily be displaced by the next search engine, and one that used an odd electronic open-auction process to go public.

However, the stocks began to ascend quite impressively. It has grown to a pretty huge company in three years ‘time; it was much closer to what Facebook is forecast to become in its year three in 2014. In 2005 Google's shares had soared 135% to attain a valuation of $120 billion, just about what Facebook has today. The Google shares have been able to outperform the market always and currently, they trade around a robust $867.

However, for investors who bought Google after its outstanding performance in 2005, it wasn’t always a cake walk. The company saw a stock knockout where the shares fell as much as 18% in the first quarter that year before recovering. However, the stock saw a new rise later on.

Things You Should Know About the Global Ad Market

Advertising trends in 2014 have taken a positive turn globally and the outlook is quite optimistic. Moreover, ad spending is being considered globally and spending on the same is considered by advertisers. Here are 10 definite points that should be thought over about the global advertising market:

Insights gleaned from a forecast that Publicis Groupe's ZenithOptimedia is releasing today:

Global ad spending is rapidly gaining pace. While worldwide spending was about 3.6% in 2013, this trend will see a substantial rise of about 5.3% in 2014 and 5.8% in 2015 and 2016. In other words, the ad market is all set to match its pre-recession growth rate of 5.4% in 2007, the next year.

Ad spending in 2013 is going to top $500 billion for the very first time because of the rise in global spending. Well, that is precisely $90 for every individual living in the markets which has been tracked by ZenithOptimedia.

Spending in the U.S. for global advertisements is going to remain below the pre-recession levels. There won’t be a chance that the U.S. passes its 2007 ad spending peak of about $178 billion. Well, this may be the situation till 2015. However, this does not mean that U.S. does not have an ad growth. In fact, ZenithOptimedia predicts that there will be a whopping 4.7% increase in 2014 which is incidentally the fastest growth since 2004. What’s more! It expects a robust increase of 4.6% and 4.1% in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Worldwide Ad Spending by Medium

TV remains the world’s largest ad spending medium. However, what needs to be noticed is that internet took over the newspapers’ position and emerged as the second largest advertising medium in 2013. Currently, the internet captures one in five ad dollars. In 2005, internet ranked 6^th in the global ad media and it rocketed past all mediums like newspapers, magazines, radio and outdoor.

With all regions showcasing an increase in the ad spending, Latin America has been the fastest-growing region since 2013 and is expected to maintain its leading position through 2016. This region is expected to have a significant growth of 8.1% in 2013 to 12.7% in 2016. In the Asia Pacific region, the spending has a single digit gain in the range of 6% to 7% till 2016. The Western Europe is expected to have a modest growth of 1.9% to 2.3% both in 2015 and 2016, which is actually following declines in 2012 and 2013.

China is a great hot spot for ad spending. It has always been growing and will continue to do so by 10% through 2016. It ranks 3^rd, following U.S. and Japan in the ad market and is known to have the fastest growth amongst the world’s largest ad markets. Fast food selling brands like KFC spend about 32.8% of its measured media spending in China in 2012. Apart from this, energy drink marketer Red Bull also placed 27.5% and the watch brand of Swatch Group placed 24.1% ad spending in China.

BRIC bloc is ascending. Russia is expected to position itself as one of the ten largest ad markets in 2015 along with China and Brazil. India on the other hand, which is on the No.14 spot, will witness a 39% growth in 2016, making itself on of the 10 fastest-growing countries for advertising

 View the Global 100, a ranking of the 100 Largest Global Marketers by measured-media spending.

Facts from Ad Age's Global Marketers report:

The United States has 41 of 100 largest global marketers. Europe follows by being headquarters for 36; Asia has 23. Amidst the 100 marketers, 94 did advertising in U.S. only six firms had no measured media spending. Two telecoms- France’s Orange and U.K.’s Vodafone, which is basically selling 45% of its stake in Verizon Wireless to the Verizon Communications and two French automakers - PSA Peugeot Citroën and Renault and France's Carrefour, one of the world's biggest retailers; and Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa, which owns telecom ventures, ports and other holdings.

Spending on technology is rapidly gaining pace. Consumer electronics and technology is the fastest growing industry amongst the Global100. It has shown a 9.6% increase in 2012 with measured media spending. Samsung Electronics, who’s measured spending showed an enormous 55.1%, was the highest growth among the Global100.

Personal care marketers have also made a considerable impact over the ad spending. It makes about one fourth of the total Global100 spending. Advertisers from Procter& Gamble Co., Unilever and L’Oréal are the biggest global advertisers.

News You Should Know!

On Monday, Google announced its acquisition of the smart thermometer maker Nest for $3.2 billion.

Focusing on the mobile users, Twitter presented a redesign of its website.

Technology research firm Garter has a bad news for app developers- Free apps are all set to take over the app ecosystem and less than 1% of mobile apps will bring about enough profit which could be considered as financial success.