Technology truly is groundbreaking as it quickens the pace of our everyday activities, and shrinks the world down to a small screen. The improvements around efficiency have led to marketplace  breakthroughs, like TaskRabbit, which received $850k in its latest round of funding from First Round Capital.

Task Rabbit is a site that pairs customers with personal assistants, called ‘runners,’ to do the tasks they don’t have time to do. Some these activities could be running money to the bank, picking up your clothes from the dry cleaner, jump-starting a car, etc. These runners have undergone background checks, and TaskRabbit takes 12 to 28 percent of the runners pay for the marketplace service it provides.

While the company is relatively new, this most recent funding comes after TaskRabbit raised $1 million last year from Baseline Ventures and Floodgate.  According to TaskRabbit CMO Anne Moellering, “The site expanded to the San Francisco Bay Area this summer. San Francisco is already doing as much task volume as Boston, and the company plans to expand to more cities soon.” So far, TaskRabbit boasts that 80% of  customers would recommend its services again.

TaskRabbit’s funding and proof of concept parallels another trend in the mobile arena.  Perhaps you’ve noticed the sudden sprouting of companies that manage offers and discounts via mobile applications, distributing real-time coupons. Now it turns out that consumers aren’t only coming after discounts, but a significant number also wants accessible information.  According to a March 2010 Deloitte survey [via eMarketer], the top two activities in mobile phones involve deals while the subsequent three are centered around information access. People are interested in learning more about a product brand, and do some healthy inquiries.

Porter Novelli, as of August 2010, foresees that “retailers will move to act as middlemen, with their own mobile technologies helping to influence the consumer at the shelf,” but at the same time expects a conflict among brands and manufacturers. To counter this, Dave Sikora, founder and CEO of Digsby said that, “Our view is that if you’re a retailer, you’re going to have your own branded app. It’s like your affinity card. Like a frequent-user card. It’s multidimensional and allows you to check into stores and accumulate rewards points and time-sensitive discounts. You can use the scanner to obtain more product information, but it emanates from your branded application.”

Thanks to technology, these sub economies and task-oriented mobile applications make life more efficient. Though this may come with a few complications at first, they become very useful when improved to work at their best.