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LinkedIn Launches App for iPad and Android Tablets

Professionally minded social network LinkedIn has at long last launched an app dedicated to tablets. Available for iOS on the iPad and on Android devices, the tablet-optimized app is slick, featuring a Flipboard-style news feed and sleek design throughout.

LinkedIn also revealed an interesting statistic: 22% of the site's traffic comes from mobile devices. Knowing this, it becomes surprising that LinkedIn waited to long to release an iPad app. But with how polished this first version appears, it seems that they simply decided to take some time to get it right.

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Three Steps to Evaluating Your Social Campaign

A smart social media presence is vital to a company’s growth.

In order to succeed, an organization must have a solid overarching social media strategy backed up by numerous social media campaigns.

Because these campaigns are the building blocks of a strong strategy, it is important to evaluate each across its beginning, middle and end.

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HootSuite CEO Puts His Money Where His Tweets are: Ryan Holmes Invests in Chirpify

Late last month, Vancouver's HootSuite closed a financing round with OMERS Ventures, who bought a $20 million ownership stake in Vancouver-based HootSuite via a secondary purchase from the company’s existing shareholders.

The financing pegged HootSuite's valuation at over $200 million. But more important, it helped CEO Ryan Holmes and his co-founders and early investors "de-risk" and refocus on their plans to build HootSuite into a billion dollar company.

Looks like the team isn't sitting on their recent windfall. Rather, they're putting their hard-earned money back to work in the Pacific Northwest ecosystem.

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HootSuite Announces Fourth Wave of Partner Integrations: MailChimp, Chime.in, and More

Vancouver-based startup HootSuite has extended the functionality of its social media management system with a fourth wave of partner integrations. Joining the company's growing app directory now are MailChimp, Chime.in, Identi.ca, Vision Critical Surveys, and RSS Reader. HootSuite says that these apps will be available immediately to Free, Pro, and Enterprise clients.

“Businesses today are social. Success depends on connecting with customers instantly across multiple social media channels and networks. The growth of our App Directory gives clients an impressive arsenal of tools to do this, all in a single place,” says HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes. “Our goal, as we close in on six million users by end of year, is to continue aggressively integrating leading apps, turning our dashboard into the mother of all SaaS resources for the social business.”

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Facebook Hits 900 Million Users, 500 Million Mobile Users

Facebook now has more than 900 million monthly active users and more than 500 million mobile users, according to an update to its IPO filing. More than half of those active users come back every single day.

The social networking giant also revealed it generated just over $1 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2012, up 45% from one year ago but down 6.5% from the previous quarter. Advertising made up 82% of Facebook's revenue in the first quarter.

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Looks Like Twitter Has Finally Integrated Summify Software

In January, Twitter acquired Vancouver startup Summify. Techvibes later addressed the problems Summify may have been acquired to address.

Now, it appears that Twitter has at last made use of the Canadian-born technology. Josh Davis pointed out this morning that Twitter's new email summary is a near-replica of Summify's popular email digests. He believes this is a case of Twitter finally using Summify's software.

Josh suggests that the Summify-powered Twitter email is "useful and may bring users back," noting that it "will solve several issues that Twitter has." It does indeed exude the clean simplicity that Twitter executes so well in its interface. Looks like Summify was a solid investment for the microblogging platform.

Social Media Camp to Host Innovation Competition with $25,000 in Prizes

Victoria's Social Media Camp announced yesterday that Intertainment Media will be the charter sponsor for this year’s event and also sponsor the Intertainment Media Innovation Zone competition.

Social Media Camp takes place on June 8 and 9 in Victoria, BC.

The Intertainment Media Innovation Zone is a contest for early stage Canadian and US technology startups with a prize of $5,000 cash and $20,000 in business services.

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Half of Canadian Parents Secretly Snoop Their Teenagers' Facebook Accounts, Study Finds

People complain that Facebook isn't private enough, how it mishandles one's personal information. But it seems that another privacy breach is also rampant: your own family.  Indeed, over half of Canadian parents secretly access their teenagers' Facebook accounts, according to a survey conducted by security firm AVG. This is well above the global average of 44%. ("Global," in this instance, is 11 countries.)

However, Canadian parents weren't the world's snoopiest. Than went to our neighbours to the south: 61% of American parents snoop their teenagers' accounts.

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