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Toronto's TalentEgg Aims to Solve Youth Unemployment in Canada with #HireGenY Day on Twitter

Canda's online career resource for students, TalentEgg, has launched a campaign today called Hire Gen Y Day. Designed for Twitter, the #HireGenY hashtag will drive TalentEgg's ambition to reduce youth unemployment.

Youth unemployment in Canada is nearly 15%—or almost double the total jobless rate of just over 7%. "Students and recent graduates across the country are entering into one of the most difficult job markets in recent history," a TalentEgg statement reads.

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Toronto's Hashcaster Helps Organizers Curate Twitter Hashtags in Real-Time During Events

If you've ever tried to follow a #hashtag on Twitter, it can be quite challenging with tweets coming in every few seconds. Now imagine you're the event organizer: stuck between the real-world happenings of the conference and what's being said online every minute. 

Luckily there's one solution in Hashcaster, a service for event organizers trying to deal with the chaos of the hashtag at socially engaged conferences. 

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Less Than One-Third of Canadian Businesses Use Social Media, BMO Discovers

Less than one-third of Canadian small business owners are using social media, a new BMO Bank of Montreal survey reveals. And this comes despite the fact that half of Canadian business believe social media can increase profitability—not to mention it's free, when cost is often the only obstacle for a small business trying something new.

29% of Canadian small businesses don't believe that social media is a valuable tool, the survey found. 19% haven't tried because they lack knowledge.

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Rogers Social Media Campaign Backfires, Consumers Take to Twitter to Diss Telco [Updated]

UPDATE: Rogers has changed its promoted tweet in response to the negative backlash from consumers:

We’re on Twitter to listen & help. We’re hearing you loud & clear today. You can reach us @RogersHelps #Rogers1Number

ORIGINAL: Rogers Communications is experiencing what McDonalds did in January - a major social media backlash.

The Toronto telecommunications company attempted to promote its new Rogers One Number service through a promoted tweet: "With #Rogers1Number, 1 is the only number you’ll need! Register for this new free service." But consumers took the hashtag in another direction.

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Kony 2012 Generates Over 55 Million YouTube Views Since Monday

The biggest newsmaker from the power of social media in recent memory has been the campaign to make Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony famous for his atrocities. That hasn't come without criticism toward the charity behind the unprecedented 55-million plus views the half an hour long video has garnered on YouTube since Monday.

Called Invisible Children, they were forced to explain their actions because of a controversial past that includes questionable financial records as only 32% of their funds went to direct services last year, ABC News reported. But the online virality is incredible: this tweet has received an earth-shatterng 265,000 retweets in less than three days.

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SocialBungy to Launch a Socially-Enabled Contest and Sweepstakes Platform This Spring

socialbungy screenshotToronto and Montreal-based startup SocialBungy believes that every digital marketing campaign should be unique on its own - without seeking the help of custom development or breaking your wallet.

When the company launched two years ago as a social media marketing shop, their customers, like Steam Whistle and Lindt Chocolate, were always asking for custom campaigns. But not all companies can afford the cost that comes with customization. To meet those market demands, SocialBungy plans to launch a socially-enabled contest and sweepstakes platform this spring. 

“Ultimately our goal is to eliminate the high cost of launching a professional and brand-tailored campaign. In fact, most of our campaigns will run along the same price range as our cookie-cutter competitors, with campaigns starting at $249,” says Mike Barwick, Founder of SocialBungy.

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How Fast Can Larry the Bird Fly These Days? About 3,000 Tweets Per Second (Up 25% in One Month!)

So, it's more or less been confirmed that the long nameless Twitter bird has actually been named "Larry" all along (likely in reference to Larry Bird, the former professional basketball player). But how fast can that bird fly? These days, Larry is up to 3,000 tweets per second. And that's up by about 25% from just one month ago! Whew, those wings sure are pumping.

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Is Vancouver Canucks Goalie Roberto Luongo Secretly on Twitter?

Has the Vancouver Canucks' supertstar goaltender, Roberto Luongo, been on Twitter in secrecy since July 2011? Maybe—and the generally serious Luongo may be more of a jokester than we knew.

On Wednesday, Canucks forward Ryan Kesler tweeted to his 134,000 followers that @Strombone1 is a funny guy and worth following. But based on Kesler's Twitter habits, it was a very peculiar tweet. Who was this Strombone nobody? The Province decided to compile evidence as to why he may be Roberto Luongo.

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Netflix Refuses to Support RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet

As a streaming service without any of its own hardware products, one of the keys to Netflix's success is being compatible with as many devices as possible—from computers to smartphones to gaming consoles. Netflix has long been able to stream on Apple's iOS devices and Google's Android devices. And now that Netflix has been in Canada for a while, we'll see it on the BlackBerry platform soon… or not.

Netflix sucker-punched Research In Motion yesterday evening via Twitter, where the company stated, "We don’t have any current plans to support Blackberry devices, incluing [sic] Playbook." They didn't even bother to spell check, or capitalize the "B" in BlackBerry and PlayBook! That's how little Netflix cares about RIM.

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