Dartmouth-based SimplyCast, which specializes in multi-channel marketing platform-as-a-service solutions, has released a Facebook app generator. The generator streamlines the process for any business to create, publish, and promote marketing campaigns on Facebook, the Canadian company says.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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Facebook today announced the combination of the Preferred Developed Consultant and Marketing API programs and the subsequent launch of the newly minted Preferred Marketing Developer program. There are now 232 of these developers spanning 35 countires. One of those countries is, of course, Canada.
So who are the Canadian preferred developers? The most notable PMD is Invoke Media, which was created by Vancouver entrepreneur Ryan Holmes—now the CEO of HootSuite, a $200-million, Canadian Startup Awards finalist—several years ago. Invoke, which is hiring, is a full-service digital agency specializing in social media, web, and mobile. Its most recent project is Foodee.
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At the 2012 London Book Fair, the CEO and founder of Toronto startup Wattpad was fighting for the resolution that digital startups are the future of the publishing industry. On a team with Lulu.com's Bob Young, Allen Lau debated against traditional publishers Evan Schnittman of Hachette and Fionnuala Duggan of CourseSmart.
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Toronto startup StoreMaker is rebranding itself as FeedSeed. Founded in August 2011, the startup has been planning a public launch in July.
“After a long search and much debate about different names, our team decided on FeedSeed,” said Mike Cunningham, CEO of FeedSeed. “We feel that it better explains our platform than StoreMarker did and to be honest, FeedSeed is easier to say.”
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