The arrival and rapid rise of freelancing is timely. With an unstable global economy, employed and unemployed people are turning to freelance work for extra income or for full-time work.
A third of workers in the United States have entered freelancing. Thus an estimated 42 million Americans have chosen to work without the standard benefits from employers: 401 (k) plans, flexible spending accounts and health insurance.
Contrary to popular belief, freelance work can be fulfilling, and people …

It’s been more than 10 years since Reid Hoffman, an entrepreneur, investor and product strategist out of Oxford University, called his colleagues from PayPal and SocialNet to gather in his living room and start a new company called LinkedIn.
Hoffman officially announced on Sunday in a company blog that LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, is celebrating its 10th anniversary in the business.
The company started slow in its early days, with only 4,500 members after its …

Facebook has another reason to celebrate this year: the world’s largest social network has made it into the Fortune 500 list.
The social networking company only needed nearly nine years after launch to break through the illustrious list of U.S. companies.
Excluding spun-off companies, Facebook is the fastest company in history to enter the Fortune 500 list after it went public.
The previous titleholder was Google, as it made the list 16 months after its initial public offering.
Facebook …

Android and iPhones still lead the user base of smartphones in the United States, as the two platforms accounted for 91 percent of smartphone operating systems in the world’s most lucrative market for mobile devices.
The latest MobiLens report from global analytics firm comScore has revealed that Apple still ranks as the top smartphone maker, with iPhones accounting for 39 percent market share, while Google led the race for top smartphone operating system, with Android smartphones …

The 50 billionth iOS app download is within reach, as Apple celebrates the milestone with updated lists of top iOS apps.
Appadvice.com reports that the Cupertino-based tech giant has announced a promo with a $10,000 App Store gift card to whomever makes the 50 billionth iOS app download.
Apple launched its apps marketplace nearly five years ago, and now it wants to celebrate the milestone with the reward.
Also, it updated the lists of all-time top iPhone and iPad apps – paid and …

Several brands in specific industries are barely felt on Pinterest. Global brand firm Digitas and analytics suite Curalate have released an infographic that details brand engagement on Pinterest for three markets: fashion and retail, automotive and electronics.
The study found that 70 percent of brand engagement on Pinterest is user-generated, unlike Facebook and Twitter, where companies push campaigns using verified accounts and pages. At Pinterest, the community shares more personal …

During Facebook’s fourth quarter earnings report in January, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company has turned into a mobile company. And as if to quell doubters, its latest fiscal report only strengthened his claim.
Facebook, the world’s largest social networking company, had 751 million monthly active users as of the end of March this year.
The milestone is 54 percent higher than the first quarter of last year, said the company during its first quarter earnings report on …

UNICEF Sweden is candid but practical. The Swedish arm of the United Nations Children’s Fund has released a new TV commercial about what it thinks many people have forgotten: Facebook Likes don’t save lives.
The 40-second video, with nearly 80,000 views on YouTube, introduces a boy named Rahim, who lives with his younger brother in a slum area.
The 10-year-old kid’s brief message tells his fear that something bad may happen to his young sibling if he gets ill, just like their …

The proliferation of social media has interrupted the traditional work flow of several fields, only to entrench its roots and become a key part of most of them. And one of these fields is digital marketing.
In a post on Mashable, Seattle-based software provider Optify used an infographic to show how each digital marketer has his or her own way of using social media.
Optify content marketing manager Danie Pote told Mashable that the representation aims to arouse the sense of humor of digital …

Google has pulled out and banned all self-updating Android apps from the Google Play Store in an attempt to stop automatic updates.
The Google Play Store used to update Android apps with the simple click of My Apps in the submenu and “Update all.” Users can even set automatic updates for Play Store apps individually.
While the process is relatively simple for end users, it can be time-consuming for Android app developers.
Some app creators avoided the Play Store and updated their apps …