Google, the online search behemoth has launched a website for people who need help on just about anything from photography to cooking; other categories include Home & Garden, Computers & Electronics, Health & Counseling, Nutrition & Fitness, Fashion & Beauty, Art & Music, Cooking and Education. It utilises much of Google’s existing services like Wallet and Hangouts to create an online marketplace where people can sell their service. Previously unveiled in August as a private service, Helpouts is now open to anyone and they can tap into more than 1,000 vetted providers.

Helpouts already has an Android app and is available on the Web. The courses are created by tutors who may charge for their services out of which Google takes a 20% cut As many as 1,000 experts are on Helpouts, with individuals, small and medium-sized businesses being a part of the service.

The minimum age for people using the service is 13 while 18 is the minimum age to become an expert. Google has indicated some future plans of developing an API for the service to expand its reach.

Here is the introductory video to Helpouts.

> Source: TheNextWeb

Photo cred: Ruth Glass

E-commerce giant, eBay announced its Internet and mobile payments arm, PayPal will acquire Braintree for $800 million in cash. This is part of PayPal’s push to dominate the mobile payments market which has seen an influx of competitors from the likes of Visa, MasterCard, Stripe and Dwolla. The increasing ubiquity of smartphones and tablets is helping drive the demand for payments on mobile.

Braintree, a Chicago-based startup that offers merchants in over 40 countries worldwide and processes payments in over 130 currencies, is a company started in 2007 by Bryan Johnson. It has served as a reliable platform for payments for fast growing merchants and companies such as Airbnb, OpenTable and Uber. It was on track to process about $12 billion in sales this year.

PayPal president President, David Marcus penned a blog post saying:

As a separate service offered by PayPal, Braintree will be able to scale its platform at a rate that is just not possible for a startup. PayPal’s already solved many of the regulatory and logistical hurdles that will help to extend Braintree’s reach to more customers in more markets even faster. Our resources will enable them to push the boundaries of innovation with ambition and confidence for consumers, merchants and developers around the world. It’s business as usual for Braintree. Braintree will continue to maintain its best-in-class service for its customers and developers for the foreseeable future.

Some of the VC firms expected to get a huge pay day from their investment in Braintree include legendary VC shops Accel Partners and Greycroft Partners and others like RRE Ventures and New Enterprise Associates who have invested about $69 million.
Courtesy: Business Wire

Source: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, August 7, 2013.

Smartphone shipments increased by a whopping 51.3 percent from 156.2 million to 236.4 million shipped a year earlier. In terms of year-on-year growth, Android grew a whopping 73.5 percent in comparison with iOS’s 20 percent growth. Only Windows Phone grew faster with a stunning 77.6 percent year-on-year growth. A look at the different OS vendors are available below:

Top Android Smartphone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, 2013 Q3 (Units in Millions)

Source: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, August 7, 2013

Top Windows Phone Smartphone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, 2013 Q3 (Units in Millions)

Source: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, August 7, 2013

These results should not worry Apple as much as they still account for a majority of the profits in the smartphone industry even though Samsung is hot on their heels. A new iPhone and iOS should help in shoring up their market share from competitors especially BlackBerry.

Also, Google announced that 1.3 million Android devices are activated daily. That is up from 900,000 a day in July 2012 as announced by Andy Rubin.

The question remains how much steam does Android have left in it?

Source: Mashable

SkyDrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage service and has been running for a while. Microsoft took it up a notch this year by introducing an app for Windows, thereby making SkyDrive a competitor to other storage services such as Dropbox and Google’s Drive.

Download SkyDrive on Google Play here and on iTunes Store here

Flipboard, the social aggregator app which launched 2 years ago has announced that it just added its 20 millionth user. Barely 4 months since the Android app was released and it had 5 million users at the end of last year. That represents an increase of four-fold in just 8 months. The company has forged a wide range of partnerships with companies like the New York Times where they instituted the paywall for New York Times’ articles.

Below is a detailed infographic from the Flipboard team.

Source: Flipboard blog

Unlike most Internet firms, Nasty Gal boasts a 350,000-strong loyal user base from 60 countries with a quarter visiting the site for seven minutes per day and the top 10% visiting the site more than 100 times per month. This is remarkable even for an fashion site. The company has a plethora of competitors from Lyst which raised $5 million and JustFab which raised 76 million.

The company has not relied heavily on major advertisements through celebrity endorsement but mainly through social media and the quality of its products.

Time will tell if the remarkable growth will continue and it will be the face of fashion e-commerce on the Internet. Please leave your comments below.

Source: TechCrunch

Image Source: Nasty Gal homepage

On-demand video streaming site Netflix has just crossed the 1 million subscriber
mark in the United Kingdom and Ireland. This is remarkable considering Netflix
launched in the UK in January. Netflix has embarked on a price war with Amazon’s
LoveFilm and Sky’s NowTV services. In a highly competitive market, Netflix is
turning a corner especially after its controversial decision to move to streaming
over the Internet that saw almost 75% drop in the market value of the company.
The UK, Ireland and South America have proven to be overwhelming success
stories for the company, considering Netflix is facing sagging growth in the US and
Canada.

We cannot wait to see how the on-demand video streaming market will pan out for
Netflix? Please post your comments below.

Source: TechCrunch

Image: Flickr/vintspiration

Image Source: Flickr/Taktor

Apple, the maker of blockbuster gadgets like the iPod, iPhone and iPad has just clocked
another milestone by taking the crown as the  most valuable public company ever. The previous holder was Microsoft back in 1999 at the climax of the dot-com bubble when
it was worth $616.3 billion.

This is remarkable as it was just over a year since Apple
dethroned the energy giant Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company on the planet.

Trading at $665.14 on the NASDAQ, the technology juggernaut is now worth
$622.06 billion. Apple already accounts for about 20% of the tech-heavy NASDAQ
stock index.

It seems that this company has no bounds by which its stock price can rise. However, this
brings to mind the euphoria at the height of the tech bubble in the late ’90s that saw Cisco
briefly become the most valuable company in the world.

The question remains, is this more real than fake? Please leave your comments below.

Also check out this Tumblr dubbed Things Apple is Worth More Than which gives you a good visual idea how valuable the company is.

Courtesy: AllThingsD

Image source: TheSeaFarer, Flickr

Corporate social network, LinkedIn has just crossed 175 million users up from 161 million users in May according to its quarterly results filed to the stock markets on Thursday. It had revenues of $228 million compared to the loss made by Facebook within the same time period.

The question remains if LinkedIn can keep up this incredible growth and stunning profits for its investors. This comes as there are rumours suggesting Facebook may launch its own jobs service.

Source: Mashable