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Less Than One-Third of Canadian Businesses Use Social Media, BMO Discovers

Less than one-third of Canadian small business owners are using social media, a new BMO Bank of Montreal survey reveals. And this comes despite the fact that half of Canadian business believe social media can increase profitability—not to mention it's free, when cost is often the only obstacle for a small business trying something new.

29% of Canadian small businesses don't believe that social media is a valuable tool, the survey found. 19% haven't tried because they lack knowledge.

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Startup Canada Tour Kicks off in Halifax

l to r: Tanya Shaw, Andrew Doyle, Rustum Southwell, Adam Chowaniec, and Thomas Hayes

Startup Canada, an organization dedicated to helping and promoting entrepreneurship across Canada, officially kicked off their national tour in Halifax on Monday. Over the next six months, the tour will stop for 30 town hall events across Canada.

To give you a scale as to exactly how large the tour will be, there are 100 fringe events planned in coordination with the town hall stops, 180 people make up 12 steering committees to plan and execute the events, and there are over 250 volunteers helping to make it a reality.

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Rogers Social Media Campaign Backfires, Consumers Take to Twitter to Diss Telco [Updated]

UPDATE: Rogers has changed its promoted tweet in response to the negative backlash from consumers:

We’re on Twitter to listen & help. We’re hearing you loud & clear today. You can reach us @RogersHelps #Rogers1Number

ORIGINAL: Rogers Communications is experiencing what McDonalds did in January - a major social media backlash.

The Toronto telecommunications company attempted to promote its new Rogers One Number service through a promoted tweet: "With #Rogers1Number, 1 is the only number you’ll need! Register for this new free service." But consumers took the hashtag in another direction.

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What's Next for Social Games? Canada's Big Viking Games is Carving a Path

The gaming landscape sure is different than from the days of Super Mario Bros. Games have evolved, from a one-way battle against artificial intelligence to split-screen and co-op missions, to totally interactive and engaging social occasions.

Today, so-called "social games" create an itch that needs to be scratched, and offer up paid in-game products as the calamine lotion (classic Don Draper line). They typically all use a similar structure and formula. For those of you unfamiliar, such games generally run on a freemium model.

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HootSuite's Ryan Holmes on Entrepreneurship, SXSW, and The Next Big Thing [Video]

This afternoon, Vancouver-based entrepreneur Ryan Holmes, founder of Invoke Media and CEO of HootSuite Media, participated in a live chat on Vokle as part of YEC Global. This live chat, which saw Ryan answer questions from readers in real-time, is now available to stream on Vokle here.

HootSuite has been a smashing success, not only locally but around the world. The social media dashboard has become of of Vancouver's most prominent startups in recent times. The company plans to double its headcount this year and reach six million users by the end of 2012.

Ryan remains on the board of Invoke, and also acts as an advisor for other startups, including LaunchRock and Appboy. He hopes to one day build a billion-dollar company.

Toronto-based TAXI's iPhone App Turns Pothole Hunting into Game

photo: paper-plane.frTAXI, a Toronto-based public relations and advertising firm, has created a free iPhone app that turns pothole reporting into a game. While most cities try to be proactive about fixing spring potholes, it is an arduous task—and potholes need to be found before they can be fixed.

The app was released in Montreal with a pretty interesting publicity stunt (see picture). The app is social by nature, reporting potholes, sharing statistics, and competing to be the reigning “pothole hunter." Besides this, the app is remarkably fleshed out, notifying you when you approach potholes, giving directions based on fewest potholes en route, and automatically recording the locations of any potholes you hit so you don’t have to use your phone while driving.

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Meet Canada's Grant Oyston: Can Social Media Trends and Big Data be Trusted in Light of Kony 2012?

Perhaps no one has drawn more attention than a Canadian university student in Nova Scotia named Grant Oyston. He has long questioned the charity behind the Kony 2012 movement.

His website, Visible Children, has garnered over 2.5 million views. After a notorious perception early on, he's starting to look a little better in the public’s eye as the infamous Kony campaign has taken a negative turn for the charity Invisible Children.

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Regina Company Offers Barcoded Gravestones for the Bereaved [Video]

Technology has made our world a more social place. We want to know the story, the history of everything we do.  “Who are the farmers that grew my coffee?”  “What are the conditions like for the people who assembled my iPad?”  Insight into the lives of those who affect us increases the emotional gain of these experiences.

Regina-based Remco Memorials want to expand on this idea, by placing quick response (QR) barcodes on gravestones. While engraving would be possible, Remco Memorials have wisely opted to use vinyl stickers, as technology lifetimes are not easy to predict.

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Entrepreneur, Meet Developer: Exploring Speed Networking with BizDatesTech

Entrepreneurs love developers. With the growth of the app economy, mobile development, and the social web, good software engineers and computer scientists are becoming more and more sought after.

The average starting package for a software engineer in Silicon Valley has risen from $85,000 in 2008 to $98,000 this year, despite the country's flat economy, according to data from Glassdoor. At Microsoft, software engineers can start at $128,000, and that's before options and bonuses. At Facebook, it's $138,000; at Apple, it's $149,000; and at Google, it's $151,000.

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