Vancouver-born startup Summify will shut down permanently on June 22, the company has revealed. After that date, you will no longer get your precious Summify email digests.
The Canadian web company, which started in 2010, was acquired by Twitter in January. Twitter later leveraged its technology to develop and launch its own Weekly Email Digests.
read moreAre you ignoring two-thirds of your online audience because they seem to be ignoring you?
While it might seem counter intuitive, your social media strategy should take into account that about two-thirds of social media users aren’t sharing much, but taking in quite a bit.
At mesh conference yesterday, Andrew Reid and Alexandra Samuel shared insights from the world’s largest study of social media usage for the first time ever. The study which had 55,000 respondents from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, who use one or more social media tools, revealed that a majority of users aren’t sharing, but lurking on Facebook and Twitter. To give perspective on the unprecedented number of respondents, the average Pew Research Centre study has about 2,500 respondents.
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Intigi has just launched Moonbird, a microapp that helps you find people to follow on Twitter based on the content they share.
The startup describes Moonbird as "a free service that helps you find interesting people to follow on Twitter," and using it is simple: give Moonbird an article URL and it will show you the last 20 people who have shared it on Twitter.
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In January, Twitter acquired Vancouver startup Summify and last month Techvibes reported that a few people started seeing Summify's Canadian-born technology in action.
Today Twitter made it official with a blog post titled The best of Twitter in your inbox. The post describes Twitter's new weekly email digest product that summarizes the most relevant Tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter.
Stories feature a design similar to the recently updated Discover tab, emphasizing who shared each story beneath summaries to help you decide which ones matter most to you.
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Everyone always talks about which Twitter users have the most followers. It's been the same for a while now: Lady Gaga is number one, while Canada's own Justin Bieber ranks second. It hasn't changed in quite some time and probably won't for many months.
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TechCrunch's Ingrid Lunden is reporting that Vancouver social media darling HootSuite is in the process of raising a $50 million round at a staggering $500 million valuation from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google.
read moreTelus is giving Canadians in British Columbia, Alberta, and Quebec something to tweet about. The Vancouver-based telco has released a free Twitter app to go with its Optik TV service.
The app is designed to provide Optik TV viewers with convenient access to Twitter features and content without missing a moment of their favourite TV show. This "must-have" app introduces "a whole new dimension to both TV watching and social media."
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When Klout launched, pretty much everyone thought it was awesome. But then people realized it was incapable of accurately measuring anything meaningful, so they grew tired of it.
Klouchebag, more or less a parody of Klout, is poised to be the next great Twitter fad. The simple online app calculates a score, much like Klout—but instead of determining online influence, it measures if someone is nice or a douchebag.
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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.
Ready or not, this is the decade of gamification.
If you’re unfamiliar, gamification is the process of using game-like elements such as challenges, levels, badges, points and rewards to engage users, solve problems, and create pleasurable brand experiences. Being a gamer myself, I’m more likely to engage in an activity if it is fun. So when my twitter feed was flooded with quirky tweets like “Kapow! These masked men would keep their secret identities secret with Minigroup’s multiple profile feature," I was compelled to see what the fuss was all about.
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