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.
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Facebook boasts more than 900 million active users—that's roughly 13% of the Earth's population. It has made famous the iconic "like" button and turned "friend," "Facebook," and other nouns into verbs. It has spurred jokes, memes, parodies, competitors—even a best-selling book and Hollywood blockbuster. It, being a social network, has also witnessed its users develop particular online habits and etiquette.
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Despite getting demolished by the Dragons, Yaron Baraz and his startup Crowdfanatic are still at it.
Two weeks ago Baraz pitched Crowdfanatic's new "group connectivity layer for Facebook" at DEMO in Santa Clara and the reception was much more positive.
Crowdfanatic’s new social app acts as layer over Facebook, so that fans of of our group on facebook can go head-to-head with another group (think Twilight versus Huger Games).
Users can create "arenas" in which these fans will suggest debate topics, play games, vote in polls, and perform other Facebook-oriented actions such as liking and commenting. On either side, fans can become “top supporters” depending on how often they engage with the arena.
The end goal is to win your debates and spread your side of the story on the biggest social network in the world.
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Toronto's RentCompass has added a Facebook app to its portfolio.
Self-touted as Canada’s first renters’ mobile App available on iOS and Android devices, web startup RentCompass has been dedicated to making renting easy and accessible for Canadians.
The Facebook app is naturally social: it allows you to get your friends' opinions on neighbourhoods and building and share listings friends who are hunting for their next space.
RentCompass says its goal is to create "a streamlined rental property solution that is always up to date, on the web and mobile." The RentCompass iPhone app is th most downloaded Canadian rentals search app in the iTunes store and is rated four out of five stars.
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Facebook Offers never really took off in the US. In fact, it was killed off after just a few quiet months of testing.
Yet the social networking giant is resurrecting the service and bringing it to Canada. Offers, which is a daily deals service akin to Groupon, will let businesses send out deals to the newsfeeds of Facebook users who have "liked" them. Should that user accept the deal, they'll get an email voucher and redeem it.
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MoSo 2012, Canada’s Mobile and Social Media Conference, brings together over 300 of Canada’s brightest creative minds to imagine the future of technology in Saskatoon.
Featuring two days of engaging presentations from some of the world’s most prolific social media and mobile companies, MoSo offers a line up unheard of this far from Silicon Valley. Aimed at developers and business audiences alike, the conference offers a chance to get a glimpse of the next big thing and connect with the folks who are making it happen.
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There's Facebook, with over 900 million users and the broadest mix of people and purposes possible. And then there's Vancouver's This Is Our Stop, a niche network designed for bus riders.
Vancouver developers Tylor Sherman and Todd Sieling have created a mobile-optimized social network in which users enter the five-digit code of their bus stop and are then presented with a map, arrival times, and a text box inviting them to "talk about this stop." It's an open-ended network; write anything. The founders liken it to a chalkboard hanging at the bus stop where anyone can grab chalk and write anything.
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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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Professionally minded social network LinkedIn has at long last launched an app dedicated to tablets. Available for iOS on the iPad and on Android devices, the tablet-optimized app is slick, featuring a Flipboard-style news feed and sleek design throughout.
LinkedIn also revealed an interesting statistic: 22% of the site's traffic comes from mobile devices. Knowing this, it becomes surprising that LinkedIn waited to long to release an iPad app. But with how polished this first version appears, it seems that they simply decided to take some time to get it right.
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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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