Week That Was - 2007-07-20

By Dave Forde on July 23rd, 2007 | All posts by Dave Forde

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Chances are that if you are reading this from an email or RSS feed you understand or are interested in social media, but there are still quite a few people in the market place that the words “social media” or “web 2.0″ do not resonate with. One this is for sure, it is real and has had a significant impact on how we look at the world, stay connected and do business. For a great example of this, look to Ross Mayfield’s blog. The CEO and Co-Founder of Socialtext has posted that the company is now looking to hired a new CEO to allow him the time to focus on other aspects of the company’s growth, and also suggesting to contact him via LinkedIn. He is by passed the traditional methods used to find talent such as job boards or recruiters and leverage free systems available on the Internet. Would Ross get better quality applicants through social media tools vs. traditional recruiting methods?

Podcasting may have been the word of the year in 2005, but online video is certainly getting its share of attention this year. comScore’s latest data shows that 75% of US based Internet users watched average of 158 minutes of online video per user during the month of May 2007. Google Sites (which includes YouTube) topped the rankings by unique video streamers and most videos streamed, and one out of three or 35% used YouTube to stream their videos.

Facebook continues to grow, and be a shining example of where social networks are moving towards, the buzz a few weeks ago was the news of Bay Partners creating a VC fun for Facebook applications. Toronto’s developer community is anticipating August 7 as the Facebook Platform team comes to Toronto for the “Facebook Developer Garage - Toronto” to share some insights and examples of how the others can build on the applications for the platform.

Here are some of the other industry stories and news that we talked about in this edition of The Week That Was.
Account Wins:

ThinData selected as email marketing solution provider for two of Canada’s top brands

Nstein Technologies signs on to deliver CMS solutions for Canoe.ca

Headlines:

Vortxt Interactive Re-brands As Vortex Mobile

MyThum celebrates 5 years in mobile marketing

JobLoft partners with Nexopia.com to provide job board technology

AOL Canada hits a new milestone with reaching 20 million unique visitors monthly

Deal Flow:

IBM acquires DataMirror for $170 million

New Hires:

Freda Colbourne takes the reigns as CEO of Edelman Canada