Twitter and LinkedIn unite.

Twitter-In is what Biz Stone refers to as the teaming up of the two platforms Twitter and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a business oriented social networking site used for professional use and with Twitter being used more and more for business and professional reasons and with our online networks becoming more integrated with our resume, the fit seems natural. The new features intended to make LinkedIn and Twitter more powerful for the user has been launched today and will be rolling out within the next few days. You will now be able to sync your accounts so that when you update your LinkedIn status you will be tweeting it to your Twitter followers and vise versa. The set up is very easy, on LinkedIn you can simply select the Twitter icon under your networks update box on your home page. For Twitter you have the option to send all tweets to LinkedIn or select specific ones using the hashtag #li or #in so that only selected tweets will be sent to your LinkedIn which is a good feature to have. It also seems that you add multiple Twitter accounts to your LinkedIn page.

The partnership could prove to be very useful for those with accounts on both sites and will make updating both these networks that much easier. The following video features LinkedIn Co-founder Reid Hoffman and Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone talking about the partnership. This quick video demonstrates how easily the accounts can be synced and talks about the integration between the two platforms being like peanut butter and chocolate. Updating just got easier.

 

Toronto video goes viral

It's hard to get away from technology nowadays as a 62 year old Toronto women found out when she somehow parked on top of another car in a Toronto gym parking lot and then drove away. The whole thing was caught on surveillance camera and soon went viral and dubbed the Worst Parking Job Ever by Mashable. Here is the video:

 

The 62 year old women was arrested and Todd Jamison was presented with a brand new car by a representative from Hyundai Canada. Hyundai took the opportunity to use the video to their advantage as a way to show consumers that 'at Hyundai, we like a story with a happy ending'. One of the marketing advantages to the new era of user created content is that if the company is smart, they will jump on something like this and turn it into a positive brand experience such as  Hyundai did. They even took it to the next level and instead of putting out a press release, they created a video to capture the moment and ensure the caring message from Hyundai was well received with the viral video itself. This is what people are talking about when they tell companies to be listening. Hyundai saw an opportunity in the viral video and acted on it. Hyundai didn't have to do anything at all but they did and the video they produced has had 92,522 hits and counting. That's great publicity for them and puts them in a good spot with consumers.

 

 

A few things about this intrigued me. Videos like these catch on like wild fire, such as the one about the baby surviving getting hit by a train a few weeks ago. That incredible video saw millions of hits in a matter of days. People love stories like this. Real content from real people and brands and companies have been catching on. We see a lot more marketing veering towards compassion, engagement and customer experience. The shift is happening because people now have control of what they want to see and hear about and companies have to adhere to what they want or get ignored. You can become the hero like Hyundai did, or the bad guy. People like it when a company goes out of its way to make a consumer happy so I'm sure they will be getting a lot of positive feedback from the situation.

TELUS Announces Possible iPhone Pricing Plans

TELUS today announced that on November 5th, it will be launching new clear and simple pricing plans with no System Access Fees or carrier 911 fees. This includes a revamp of their current plans to make a 'what you see is what you get' appeal and will be available to both business and consumer wireless rate plans (including Mike and Mobile High Speed).

Current customers will have the option to stay with the plan they are already on or switch to the new clear plans after November 5th. It's not the plans themselves that are changing, but the pricing model, and by taking away the extra fees, a current $25 plan will actually cost less more than the new clear $30 plan. TELUS says they recognize that plans and pricing can be confusing for the consumer and want to introduce pricing transparency to adhere to the needs and wants of their consumers.

Visit TELUS for more information.

FreshBooks Latest Addition: The Profit Loss Report

If you use FreshBooks, an onlince invoice and time tracking service, you'll be glad to see the latest addition, The Profit Loss report which determines your gross profit, net profit and total expenses which can be found under the 'Reports' tab. Along with that, comes a FreshBooks reporting first: Cost of Goods Sold, or COGS. There are two ways expenses can become a Cost of Goods Sold: First, any expenses you rebill to a client will be included in your Cost of Goods Sold and second, you can edit your Cost of Goods Sold and add expense categories you want included in your COGS on your Profit & Loss report. To ensure smooth efficiency, FreshBooks will remember the categories you have as COGS for future use. This is just one of the many improvements FreshBooks has made so far.

FreshBooks is a fast and simple online invoice and time tracking service providing professionals with an easy to use and professional system. FreshBooks is based out of Toronto, serving over 100 countries.

GameON: Finance 2009 goes this week

If you’re a game developer, innovator or investor, you don’t want to miss GameON: Finance 2009. Two days packed with keynote speakers and panelists, gaming and networking for the interactive games industry happening Oct. 27 - 28th at The Design Exchange at 234 Bay Street in downtown Toronto ON. The event will showcase case studies and panels providing insight into the prospect of economic, cultural, and technological growth within the gaming landscape.

You’ll definitely want to hear this line up of excellent keynote speakers from Mark Skaggs, VP and GM of Social RTS and Zynga speaking on Social games: The hottest trend in gaming right now, and Yannis Mallat, Chief Executive Officer Ubisoft Montreal & Toronto on Innovation pipeline: feeding our growth with breakthroughs. Accompanied by a long line of influential speakers like John Albright, Dante Anderson, and Jennifer Blitz. You can check out the full schedule for panels and speakers here. There’s something for everyone with an array of topics from business models, funding and networking to future development. If you’ve attended previous years you’ll be excited to know that new this year, attendants are given the option to sign up for one on one consultations with legal and tax experts to have all your questions answered in private, confidential sessions. Jump into the business of games and register.

As an official media sponsor, we’ll be getting all the scoop for you. And just in case you can’t make it be sure to follow our tweets and blog posts during and after the event.

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