Which apps are you using? Which ones would you add? Do you ever think about what apps your favorite businesses are using?
These are just a few of our favorites. This list is different for everyone but is key to your marketing strategy and growth of your business or brand.
Bastian Lehmann, CEO and founder of delivery app Postmates
Delivery and logistics startup Postmates has raised $80 million at a valuation north of $400 million, the company announced Thursday.
The new round of funding, led by Tiger Global Management, will be used to expand into deliveries beyond just food, and to introduce a new service that charges customers $1 each for deliveries at peak hours, CEO Bastian Lehmann tells The Wall Street Journal.
Previously, the company raised $58 million from investors including Spark Capital, AngelPad, and SoftTech VC.
Postmates is part of a competitive group of on-demand delivery services. One of its New York-based competitors, WunWun, sold to startup Alfred earlier this month. But one thing that makes Postmates stand out is its dedication to delivering goods in under an hour. Another is its partnerships with high-profile companies.
Earlier this year, Postmates signed a partnership with Chipotle, which would allow it to deliver Chipotle food in the 67 markets where it operates. Starbucks is another Postmates partner — starting in Seattle, the company will deliver your coffee for you, on-demand.
Postmates is growing like crazy: it took 116 weeks for the startup to reach 500,000 cumulative deliveries in the US, but it only took 20 weeks to achieve the next 500,000 deliveries, and just 10 more weeks for the next 500,000. Some of its markets are individually profitable, Lehmann told the Journal, but the company as a whole is not.
With the news of the new infusion of capital, Postmates also revealed some new stats: the company has completed 2.8 million deliveries across 28 markets; its gross profit is on track to grow by more than 10x in 2015, compared to last year; and the company now has 13,000 Postmates doing deliveries.
Facebook Inc. agreed to buy messaging company WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock.
The 55-employee company, which acts as a kind of replacement for text messaging, has seen its use more than double in the past nine months to 450 million monthly users. That makes its service more popular than Twitter Inc., the widely used microblogging service which has about 240 million users and is currently valued at about $30 billion.
Source: WallStreetJournal
Instagram now has 150 million monthly active users with more than 60% of them residing outside of the United States. At last tally in June, the app had 130 million monthly active users. In February, the company reached the 100 million monthly active-users milestone.
Instagram, which Facebook acquired in 2012, added video capabilities to its popular photo-sharing app in June. Celebrities and brands quickly latched onto the new feature. Soon, pop star Justin Bieber became the first Instagram user to earn 1 million Likes on a video post.
As of April, nearly half of Instagram’s users are Android users. Instagram launched in late 2010 for iOS users and made the service available for Android users in April 2012.
Comparatively, rival service Vine has 40 million registered users — not to be confused with active users — as of last month.
Smartphone app developer Shazam will receive $40 million in financing from mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim, one of the world’s richest men. Shazam is a media discovery app which plans to expand to TV.
Source: Reuters
Mobile apps are extremely popular and trendy this year, Apple iPhone/iPad products accounted for 10% of Black Friday sales last week. GWOP Magazine staff has created a guide for all new Apple iPhone/iPad users as of what apps to download as soon as you step into the Mac world. (Some apps are also available on android devices) Checkout the full list after the jump.
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”
-Steve Jobs, (1955-2011)
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