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Vancouver's Summify acquired by Twitter

Vancouver's Summify announced this morning on their blog that they have been acquired by Twitter.

Congrats to Romanian co-founders Mircea Pașoi and Cristian Strat (pictured below). Terms of the transaction are not known at this time.

Our long-term vision at Summify has always been to connect people with the most relevant news for them, in the most time efficient manner. As hundreds of millions of people worldwide are signing up and consuming Twitter, we realized it’s the best platform to execute our vision at a truly global scale. Since Twitter shared this vision with us, joining the company made perfect sense.

But don't worry Summify fans, the current product won't be shelved anytime soon although they have disabled new account registration and will be removing a number of key features.

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Introducing the New Generation of Mega-Millionaire Tech Entrepreneurs [INFOGRAPHIC]

What does the new generation of tech entrepreneurs need to start their companies? Not much - a computer, some software, internet access, spare time... oh, and rare talent combined with a brilliant idea, of course.

The new generation of highly successful entrepreneurs is worth studying - and as H&R Block decided, worth publishing an infographic about. With multi-billionaire Facebook founder and 2010 Time Person of the Year Mark Zuckerberg at the head of the table, we look at him and a slew of other success stories.

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Calling all Canadian Startups - Apply to Under the Radar

This past November at the 18th Under the Radar conference five startups represented Canada and one took home an award.

Toronto's Rypple and Wave Accounting, Waterloo's TribeHR and Vidyard, and Halifax's GoInstant were among 29 startups pitching at the two-day innovation showcase and business development conference. TribeHR picked up the Judge's Choice award in the Talent 2.0 category.

Now's your chance to get some exposure in the Californian sun as event organizers are calling for companies to present at the 19th Under the Radar conference in Mountain View on April 25-26th.

The deadline to apply is January 20th and this time around they're interested in your company if it falls into one of these categories - Platforms, Big Data, Developer Tools, Analytics/BI, Mobile, Enabling Tools, Infrastructure, Automation, and Performance Management.

Not sure if you're up for it? Check out these event stats:

  • 66% of presenting companies have raised over $2.4 Billion in funding.

Enough said.

Buyosphere raises $325k seed round led by Real Ventures

NextMontreal reported this morning that Montreal's Buyosphere has completed their seed financing round, raising $325k led by Real Ventures. Also involved in the round are Jesse Kaplan of Seek Capital, John Granger of Grassfed Capital, David Chamandy of Machkor Holdings and Thomas Merlin.

According to their about us page Buyosphere is where people help people shop - We connect people who know something about stuff, where to find great deals or interesting pieces with people who need to find something that is right for them, but don't know where to start.

The newly funded Buyosphere is in the process of a pivot - it was previously focused on providing a shopping and fashion-focused community with links to purchase history but without invasive cookies. The company’s pared-down mission is now providing a Q&A platform for shoppers. Co-founder (and authour) Tara Hunt calls it “a Quora for shopping.”

Buyosphere was co-founded by Hunt, Cassandra Girard and Jerome Paradis as Shwowp, which launched at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco in September of 2010.

A Banner Year for Canada: These Were 2011's Canadian Tech Acquisitions

This morning we opened voting to The First Annual Canadian Startup Awards and among the categories is the Most Significant Canadian Acquisition of 2011.

Unlike the five other Startup Award categories, the list of candidates was limited as there were only so many acquisitons during the year. Luckily Canada had a huge year and our readers had plenty to choose from. And you can vote for one of the three finalists here.

As a Canadian tech site we're happy to report that we had acquisiton activity from coast-to-coast with Zynga shopping in Victoria, BC on Vancouver Island and both Salesforce and IBM taking their shopping cart to Frederiction, New Brunswick. Not surprisingly Toronto lead the way with 16 acquisitions followed by Techvibes hometown Vancouver with seven, Montreal with four, Waterloo with three, and Edmonton and Ottawa with one each.

Of the multinationals shopping in Canada for tech, IBM led the way with three acquistions followed by Google, RiM, Salesforce, and Zynga with two each. Twitter and Groupon also picked up Canadian technology in single deals.

After the jump is a timeline of all the acquisitions that Techvibes covered during 2011.

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Soundcloud Raises $50M, Valued at $200M, Mobile Music Industry Still Wide Open

Soundcloud, known as the "YouTube for audio" ranks 281st in Canada and 364th globally according to Alexa. Techcrunch reports they've acquired a new round of funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers at $50 million with a company valuation of $200 million. 

Gigaom also reports that the mobile app that SoundCloud released has added another million people to the platform. 

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Check out the Canadian Startup Award finalists and vote for your favourite

With so many talented entrepreneurs and innovative startups right here in Canada, Techvibes deemed it a necessity to recognize, honour, and celebrate these people and their companies. Presented by KPMG, The First Annual Canadian Startup Awards will do that.

Techvibes received well over 1,000 nominations across the six categories via comment, email and tweet. So the finalists were determined by you, our readers. In the case of the overall startup category we weren't able to narrow if down to three finalists which demonstrates the high quality of the current crop of Canadian startups.

Voting is open until 11:59pm PST on Tuesday, January 17th and the winners will be announced on Friday, January 20th. One vote per person.

Mobilicity Eyes IPO in 2012

If Wind Mobile doesn't buy Mobilicity, the startup wireless carrier may just go public instead. The Globe and Mail yesterday reported that the discount carrier is planning to launch an initial public offering in the first quarter of 2012.

The IPO would aim to raise $100 million but would be delayed should the stock market remain in its currently volatile state. The share price would be positioned between $15 and $20. The company, legally known as DAVE Wireless (its founder and former CEO, since resigned, was Dave Dobbin), already has several investment banks in place for the launch, sources say.

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iNovia raises $110 Million Fund for Internet, Digital Media, and Communications

iNovia Capital announced this morning that it has raised $110 million for its third fund, iNovia Investment Fund III L.P. (“iNovia III”).

iNovia III’s investment focus is in information technology companies in North America. The initial investment size can be as low as only a few hundred thousand in seed stage companies with more mature investments as high as $10 million over the life of a given company.

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Canadian Cloud Startup shines at CloudBeat in San Francisco

Earlier this month Vancouver's Xiimo was one of ten finalists at VentureBeat's CloudBeat Conference in San Francisco. Tagged as one of the most disruptive cloud based technology companies by a panel of cloud experts and venture capital teams, Xiimo beat out 100+ other software startups in the cloud space.

Xiimo makes smart tools for small businesses allowing them to publish local promotions, accept mobile payments, create loyalty programs and benefit from smart analytics. All from a single, easy-to-use dashboard.

Xiimo is currently in private alpha moving towards private beta in February and public beta by March 2012. They have also hinted at a major partnership announcement that could accelerate traction very soon.

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