Nobody has answered Bonus 2 yet, so I'll give it a go.
Particle
Particle is an IoT ecosystem that includes several development boards and Particle's cloud servers.
Their most popular board is the Photon, which includes a Broadcom chip to connect Particle's cloud using Wi-Fi. Another board is the Electron, which is available in 2G or 3G models and allows projects to connect to Particle's servers using cellular.
Particle has also created industrial versions of their Wi-Fi and cellular boards to be used in manufacturing and finished products.
Particle provides many services for using their products, most notably a browser-based IDE for uploading firmware over-the-air, and their product management console.
Because of Particle's servers, it is very easy to integrate it with other services and technologies. (Devices can be interfaced with using Particle's REST API, which is really useful.)
Particle even works on Raspberry Pi! (There are also rumors that they will create an ESP32 based board.)
I use the Photon a lot in my High School Coding Club, and what always wows people is when I show them how little boilerplate there is and how quickly one can get it up and running with IFTTT.
Blynk
Blynk is a library for many development boards like Particle, ESP8266, Arduino, etc, that allows the board to be controlled using the Blynk app available for iOS and Android.
Control Everything
Control Everything is a company that sells many add-ons (shields) for many development boards. many of their shields are designed with relays in order to, you guessed it, control everything.
Hologram
Hologram is a cellular platform for IoT that is broader than Particle. I presume it is cheaper at scale than Particle, but other than that, I struggle to find a use case.
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Nobody has answered Bonus 2 yet, so I'll give it a go.
Particle
Particle is an IoT ecosystem that includes several development boards and Particle's cloud servers.
Their most popular board is the Photon, which includes a Broadcom chip to connect Particle's cloud using Wi-Fi. Another board is the Electron, which is available in 2G or 3G models and allows projects to connect to Particle's servers using cellular.
I have done extensive research with the Photon, created an offline utility for it, and currently do paid work with it.
Particle has also created industrial versions of their Wi-Fi and cellular boards to be used in manufacturing and finished products.
Particle provides many services for using their products, most notably a browser-based IDE for uploading firmware over-the-air, and their product management console.
Because of Particle's servers, it is very easy to integrate it with other services and technologies. (Devices can be interfaced with using Particle's REST API, which is really useful.)
Also, Particle has the best documentation I've ever seen, and it has one of the most active, helpful developer communities I've ever seen.
Particle even works on Raspberry Pi! (There are also rumors that they will create an ESP32 based board.)
I use the Photon a lot in my High School Coding Club, and what always wows people is when I show them how little boilerplate there is and how quickly one can get it up and running with IFTTT.
Blynk
Blynk is a library for many development boards like Particle, ESP8266, Arduino, etc, that allows the board to be controlled using the Blynk app available for iOS and Android.
Control Everything
Control Everything is a company that sells many add-ons (shields) for many development boards. many of their shields are designed with relays in order to, you guessed it, control everything.
Hologram
Hologram is a cellular platform for IoT that is broader than Particle. I presume it is cheaper at scale than Particle, but other than that, I struggle to find a use case.