The day after Canada Day and we have a new, and potentially exciting, microblogging service to play around with.  Identi.ca might seem like “just another Twitter clone”, but I think they are really onto something here.
Corvida, Sarah Perez, and Marshall Kirkpatrick all have it right on target.  Sure, it’s early days and Identi.ca doesn’t have all the features that we’re used to, but they have one thing that Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku all missed: the are offering the sever software as open source that can we can install ourselves.
Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, even FriendFeed, all rely on increasing their own capacity …read more

Next week, a hair less than a week from today, Redwerks, Colleen Coplick will be hosting a summer social media BBQ with Freshbooks:
Summertime BBQ: The true Canadian social media Wednesday, June 25, 2008 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM Redwerks Rooftop Patio 321 Railway Street, Suite/Buzzer 106 Vancouver, British Columbia V6A 1A4–Summertime BBQ: The true Canadian social media at Redwerks Rooftop Patio (Wednesday, June 25, 2008) – Upcoming

Will you be there?  Looks like it will be a great kick off to a social media summer.

I don’t think Yahoo can catch a break lately.  Man you have the over publicized battle with Microsoft (I doubt we’ve seen the last act of this saga), execs, managers, and just regular folks leaving in droves.  This just isn’t something that I’d like to wake up to everyday (headlines like this don’t help either: Time To Stem The Yahoo Bleed, Jerry – Silicon Alley Insider).  To add insult to injury couple of the folks brought into Yahoo are leaving, which wouldn’t be too interesting except those people are Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, the minds behind Flickr:
Photo sharing site …read more

Following Mack Male’s Twitter stream this morning (through the web, ggrrr) I caught his blog post with the announcement of the finalists for the New Media Awards:
Most Promising Company of the Year: * b5media, Toronto * Filemobile, Toronto * Viigo, Toronto—Live from nextMEDIA: 2008 Canadian New Media Award Finalists | Techvibes Blog

Of course all I have to say about that is: W00t!  Our fearless leader Jeremy Wright is there (he was speaking) as are other b5-ers.  So I expect to be able to blog the winners when they are announced.

Fingers crossed…

Last week at Mesh08, Scribblelive joined the ranks of web-based live blogging tools.  Interestingly, this one is also out of Toronto like CoverItLive.  While, granted, this is brand new and there a more features coming like a widget to embed, I don’t share Download Squad’s (ScribbleLive: Liveblogging doesn’t get much easier – Download Squad) or Techcrunch’s (ScribbleLive: Two Guys In Canada Launch Sweet Liveblogging Platform) assessment that it is better than CIL.
Like CIL, Scribblelive is web-based and is easy to get started with your live blog.  You can add additional authors and because it’s AJAX it does seem a bit …read more

Colour me biased,  but I’m really into Flock.  Yes, I am doing some work with them, but this is awesome news regardless:
Not two weeks after taking the Webby award for Social Networking, last night Flock was honoured to receive two awards at the annual VIATeC Technology Awards dinner. VIATeC is the high-tech industry association serving Victoria (and the rest of Vancouver Island), where much of the Flock development team is based. Vancouver Island is quickly becoming a hotbed for innovative tech companies, and the Flock Canada team is very excited to be part of that growth. Online Strategy of the …read more

Call it bragging rights if you wish, but b5media is still on the top of the Toronto Startup index—Toronto Start-up Index – May 2008 | Techvibes Blog.
I don’t know what else needs to be said, except if they counted all the traffic from all our blog properties, we’d blow everyone out of the water, including some “traditional media” players.
Just saying.

It’s a busy time here at b5media.  We’re growing, expanding, and gearing up for great stuff.  We got word internally last week that Rachel Segal is joining us at b5 media–word is as a marketing honcho–which is very, very cool.  I waited until Rachel had made this public before I blabbed–good thing I didn’t have to wait long:
b5media – a rapidly growing blog network that I’ve been familiar with for quite some time now. Just a thirty minute walk from my apartment and home to a fantastic crew I’m thrilled and honoured to start working with (notice the ‘u’ – …read more

We’re just getting better and better over at b5media.  Yesterday marked the début of Vancouver’s Colleen Coplick as the new blogger on BuzzNetworker.  Of course this is great for b5 and Colleen, but it’s also a reflection of how Canadians and Vangroovy folks are tuned into social media.
Colleen opened up with an aptly-named post, Introduction, and today talked about the new TweetLater service, which Colleen thinks is just some bad mojo (Missing the point).  Pretty strong start … and knowing that Colleen is feisty, to say the least, we can expect lots of good stuff.
Okay Colleen, start shaking up the …read more

This morning Rick Segal was here for the Victoria VC Roundtable .  One of the things that I really like about Rick is that he is passionate about the companies he invests in, but the thing I like most is that he is unabashedly pro-Canadian.  Rick, like me, is American–I took the leap and became a citizen, but his passion and belief in Canada is probably second to none.  So in honour of Rick, and thoroughly borrowing from him, here are the top ten reasons your tech startup should be in Canada:
 

Canadians are innovative. One word: RIM.
Canadians are well …read more