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Canadian Facebook Developer cracks Top 10 with over 17 Million Monthly Active Users

Techvibes is using Vancouver's Tradable Bits' suite of Facebook apps to host our 12 Days of Xmas promotion and the tools are working out great. If you haven't had a chance to enter, head over to our Facebook page and Like Us now - www.fb.me/techvibes.

Tradable Bits emerged from under-the-radar at last summer's GROW Conference where they launched publicly.

Tradable Bits allows users to create custom Facebook Pages and Places in minutes. Their service offers Apps to engage fans/customers. TradeableBits is easy to get started with: connect with your Facebook account, Select your Facebook Page and app, and then publish your work to your Facebook Page.

In August we reported that the Tradable Bits platform had over 6.8+ Million Monthly Active Users and was adding 95,000+ Monthly Active Users per Day.

Today they reported that they have hit cracked the Top 10 on the Facebook Developer Leader Board with 17.7 Million Monthly Active Users. And they're in pretty good company with Zynga, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft also ranking.

Facebook Looks to Maintain Presence in Location Services with Acquisition of Gowalla

According to CNN money, which cites "a source close to Gowalla," social network giant Facebook has acquired the location-services startup.

The report suggests that Gowalla's team will move to Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto as Mark Zuckerberg looks to boost his company's currently small presence in the location-services space. Instead of reviving Facebook Places, the social network aims to integrate Gowalla's technology with its new Timeline feature. It is unclear whether Gowalla in its current state will continue to exist or recieve future updates.

Gowalla was founded in 2009 by Josh Williams.

Facebook is Going Public in 2012 With a $100,000,000,000 Valuation

Following rumours of an imminent IPO, it looks like Facebook will indeed go public sooner than later.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Facebook will debut on the stock market between April and July of next year. People "familiar with the matter" say that Facebook is considering filing with the SEC as early as this year, but CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has not made a final decision.

The company apparently plans to raise up to $10 billion at a staggering $100 billion-plus valuation, which would suggest the promise of incredible long-term revenue growth considering its current revenue of roughly $4 billion in 2011. Groupon's tanking stock should serve as a cautionary tale for Mark about over-valuing tech companies, while the painfully stretched-out demise of MySpace should serve as a cautionary tale for potential investors.

Facebook expanding its Canadian operations to Kitchener/Waterloo

The world’s largest social networking company appears to be expanding its Canadian operations in a big way. Facebook, which has its Canadian headquarters in Toronto, is reportedly planning a major presence in the nearby Kitchener/Waterloo region.

The social networking giant is looking at space in a former auto-parts factory on King Street West, according to a published report in The Daily Commercial News and Construction Record. Facebook is eyeing space in The Breithaupt Block, a collection of old industrial buildings at King and Breithaupt streets, adjacent to the railway tracks in downtown Kitchener.

Facebook would be a huge addition to the growing cluster of high-tech companies in downtown Kitchener. The Breithaupt Block is a short distance from the Google office in the former Lang Tannery building at Victoria and Charles streets, which is home to about 28 technology firms.

Facebook’s New Sponsored Stories: Brilliant Advertising Tactic or Just Plain Foolishness?

This article was originally published on Smedio.

Even as the public outrage over the newly introduced ‘frictionless’ sharing refuses to die down, Facebook is introducing another major change – the world’s leading social network is now listing sponsored stories in their recently introduced News Ticker. While it may be a blessing in disguise for advertisers, Facebook users have every reason to be worried if this be the first step towards having Sponsored Stories show up in the main news feed?

On its part, Facebook says Sponsored Stories are an extension of News Feed, so it’s natural that they appear in Ticker. Unfortunately, the majority of 700 million plus Facebook user community would beg to differ.

There’s no doubt that Facebook currently rules the roost in social media advertising and this move is aimed at expanding its impressive ad portfolio, however it must throw caution to the wind as too many changes too fast are likely to irk most users.

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Is Facebook Forcing Us To Share Too Much?

This article was originally published on Smedio.

While it’s true that a social network is all about collaboration and sharing, it still needs to comply with the golden rule that states excess of anything is bad. Till date, Facebook has served as a modern age example of how to get sharing right in a social network – just the right amount of information, presented in an easy to user manner and simple controls to turn things on/ off.

Recently, Facebook launched ‘frictionless’ sharing – a feature that simply allows you to read a story that one of your friends is reading. However, there’s a catch – if you’re not judicious, you may unintentionally end up letting others see what you are doing. Some users complain that it’s cluttering the site and diminishing the overall user experience of Facebook. Other simply say it’s creepy and should be rolled back ASAP.

While I’m all for sharing, I strongly believe that Facebook needs to do a better job of managing such changes. And here’s why.

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Facebook Says The Degree of Separation is Only Four, Not Six

The theory of six degrees of separation may be false. It may only be four.

According to a massive study conducted by Facebook, the social network's 800 million users—a truly titanic sampling size for research—are seperated by just four degrees. Published in a blog post titled The Anatomy Of Facebook, the results are remarkable.


We found that six degrees actually overstates the number of links between typical pairs of users: While 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees, 92% are connected by only four degrees.

When considering even the most distant Facebook user in the Siberian tundra or the Peruvian rainforest, a friend of your friend probably knows a friend of their friend. When we limit our analysis to a single country, be it the US, Sweden, Italy, or any other, we find that the world gets even smaller, and most pairs of people are only separated by 3 degrees.

 

Social Media Tips For B2B Technology Marketers

B2B Social WorldThis morning, Environics Communications hosted a panel discussion at MaRS in Toronto entitled “The B2B Social World.” Digital B2B marketing experts from Backup Heros, Wave Accounting, Sequentia Environics, and MaRS sat on a panel to discuss the successes and failures that they’ve faced when using social media to promote their businesses.

The conversation started by identifying the best channels to use for B2B social media marketing. The panellists agreed that Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, and online communities are some of the most effective tools for reaching potential customers and building relationships.

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Is Facebook About to IPO Out of Nowhere?

LinkedIn and Zynga were decently large tech IPOs this year. But Mark Zuckerberg's multi-billion social networking empire going public would make those headlines microscopic.

An inside source cited in a recent Business Insider article suggests that Facebook is on the brink of an IPO—"possibly as soon as next month."

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PayPal's new Facebook App for Sending Money to Friends was built by Canadian startup

Social media blog Mashable got the "exclusive" story on PayPal's new Facebook App for Sending Money to Friends this morning but Techvibes has an angle that Canadian tech fans may find interesting.

Social payments are taking a giant leap forward. PayPal has unveiled a Facebook app that lets you send money to friends.

The app, simply titled Send Money, is just as straightforward as its name. You have the choice to send either an ecard with money or just money with no card. You select a card, choose a friend to send it to and then select how much money to send.

If you log-in to your Facebook account and navigate to the Send Money app you'll find "PayPal Send Money operated by ConnectionPoint" in small type in the footer of the page. Vancouver's ConnectionPoint Systems is responsible for the popular FundRazr app which allows anyone to fundraise on Facebook.

Last month when Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg was randomly spotted in Vancouver, Techvibes named five reasons why he might be in town. One of them was to acquire FundRazr.

While that rumour hasn't come true yet, if it does we now know how they're going to send ConnectionPoint CEO Daryl Hatton the money.