Canpages Inc., Canada’s fastest growing local search firm, announced today the acquisition of GigPark, an online social media platform which allows users to find local businesses and service providers through recommendations from friends as well as make recommendations themselves.
The acquisition will enable Canpages to integrate user recommendations into its online local search platform, Canpages.ca. Additionally, it will allow Canpages to add a social media layer to its online and mobile products, connecting users with its advertisers through recommendations from friends and others.
“Online recommendations, especially those from a user’s social networks, are increasingly important when choosing which local businesses to buy from,” said Olivier Vincent, President and CEO of Canpages. “With the acquisition of the GigPark, we are thrilled to be the first local search and directories publisher in North America to embrace social recommendations in a relevant way.”
GigPark was founded in 2007 by Pema Hegan and Noah Godfrey. Both Hegan and Godfrey, along with GigPark’s Director of Technology, Paul Dowman, will join the Canpages team in Toronto.
The acquisition will also allow Canpages to incorporate GigPark’s functionality and content into its ImmersiFind platform-the company’s online search and SEO-enabled publishing technology that it licenses to directory companies around the world. There are currently 15 directory publishers globally licensing the platform, which totals more than 1,500 advertising consultants that sell into the ImmersiFind network. In less than one year since ImmersiFind’s launch, Canpages has become the leading licenser of online local search technology in the world.
“Our acquisition of GigPark is another example of Canpages’ commitment to delivering the best local search experience to Canadians and ImmersiFind customers,” said Vincent. “Canpages is already Canada’s fastest growing local search company and with the addition of GigPark, we are one step closer to becoming a global leader in local search online.”
The GigPark acquisition represents another milestone for Canpages, which has grown its online presence at Canpages.ca from 300,000 unique visitors per month to 3.5 million and more than tripled its number of employees from 200 to over 700. Additionally, in less than one year Canpages has also expanded its reach from 2 million to over 8 million homes and businesses across the country.
About Canpages Inc. and Canpages.ca
Canpages is the largest independent local search and directories publisher in Canada. Its website, Canpages.ca features a national residential and business database and more than 3.5 million unique visitors come to visit it every month with their local search requests. With 84 publications and over 85,000 customers, Canpages reaches more than 8 million households and businesses across Canada. Headquartered in Vancouver, Canpages employs 700 people and has offices in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. For more information visit: www.Canpages.ca.
Daily Archives: August 24, 2009
4 posts
MYARTSPACE.com, the premier online social network for the contemporary art world, has announced the launch of MYARTSPACE.tv, a site providing live, 24-hour per day streaming contemporary art and music.
Catherine McCormack-Skiba, the founder of MYARTSPACE and CEO noted “With our incredibly rich collection of contemporary art from our 60,000 artists we represent, we have a unique ability to launch rich and interesting new art services to the viewing public. MYARTSPACE.tv allows people to enjoy very high-quality, curated contemporary art in their web browser 24 hours per day. The diversity of work is also unique, with artists from over 116 countries being represented in our community.”
The live streaming fine art service is combined with a music playlist constructed on Playlist.com. The service is interactive. Clicking on the art as it streams by allows art appreciators to learn more about the artist and purchase work from them.
Brian Skiba, Chief Technology Officer at CatMacArt Corporation, the producers of the MYARTSPACE site notes “This is a first step in an interesting new direction for contemporary art, and the way in which an audience can interact. Ultimately we see specialty fine art channels being rolled out – for photography, sculpture, mixed media, painting. We also see a variety of platforms and devices from which we can leverage including high-definition television, the iPhone, and other internet-connected devices. And finally, we’ll work towards availing dedicated channels for museums and galleries to offer a means of attracting a broader, younger audience to the contemporary art world.”.
The stream art service is available free at www.myartspace.tv.
About MYARTSPACE:
MYARTSPACE.com, the premier online venue for contemporary art, is one of the fastest growing and diverse communities on the internet. Its members include more than 60,000 artists, collectors, galleries and other art world professionals from across the globe, and it currently has on display hundreds of thousands of pieces of fine art. Membership is free and artist can upload their creative work including images, music and video. Myartspace is created and run by CatMacArt Corporation. CatMacArt Corporation is located in Palo Alto, California. www.catmacart.com.
U.S. consumer advocacy and customer complaints website, www.PissedConsumer.com, takes consumer complaints to Twitter. The new Twitter account broadcasts user comments across the microblogging service. Launching the account is an effort to reach younger consumers who may not conduct as much independent consumer research as older generations.
“The Internet makes researching companies easier for consumers,” says Joanna Simpson of PissedConsumer.com. “But that doesn’t mean that people are using all of the tools available to them. We understand that many consumers today — especially young consumers — are on social media services like Twitter. It’s an environment where they not only can feel comfortable airing their own complaints to friends and followers, but where they go for up to the minute information about their favorite things. They want to know what other people are talking about, and this new account is designed to bring them that while arming them with valuable information that can save them money and spare them an occasional customer service nightmare.”
The new PissedConsumer.com Twitter account is about more than reaching consumers. It also enables companies on Twitter to better track their brand, including consumer complaints and concerns. This will allow real-time feedback gathering, and companies are welcome to visit the articles and comments linked in those tweets to respond on the site. PissedConsumer.com advocates two-sided conversations between companies and consumers.
Due to tweet length limitations, each tweet in the PissedConsumer.com Twitter account feed contains the original article title and links. “The current format offers the best chance of company names being easily tracked for consumer research using Twitter,” says Simpson. “This enables both companies and consumers to know what the initial complaint and all comments pertain to as opposed to tweeting the first few words of each comment.” Twitter users can follow PissedConsumer.com at www.Twitter.com/consumer_press
About PissedConsumer.com
PissedConsumer.com is a premier consumer advocacy group, featuring consumer reviews and complaints in a social networking environment. The company uses online tools to publicize reviews and complaints filed by consumers on the Internet. In addition, the site offers a set of free tools necessary to bring the dispute to a fast and successful resolution, including a consumer complaint letter generator and collection of consumer tips and advice in the site’s consumer advocacy section.
For more information about PissedConsumer.com, please visit PissedConsumer.com or contact Joanna Simpson at 646-383-3404
Social gaming has quickly become one of the most viral things on the web. Starting on Facebook and now spreading to Twitter, there seems to be a new social game popping up every day. This phenomenon has quickly become old news as most of these viral games offer little to nothing in the way of innovation compared to the dozens before them. Whether you’re playing as a mob boss, a spy, or any number of other things, you still read what happens in your game off the screen. The immersive experience of actually watching the actions in a game unfold hasn’t quite made it to the social graph, until now.
Enter NinjaWarz.com, the debut social game from Broken Bulb Studios based in Scottsdale, Arizona. NinjaWarz is a flash based game that actually brings you into it’s world rather than asking you to read about it. You get to build your Ninja clan with dozens of weapons, upgradable characters, and full animation everywhere you turn in the game. You even get to watch your Ninja clan battle it out in real time with other players’ clans. As your clan wins battles, your gain levels and earn gold and Karma which allows you to continue to buy new weapons, relics, and train your ninjas as well as recruit more. So far, the game is only available on Twitter. But designers of the game say they are working fast to integrate with Facebook Connect.
NinjaWarz has also taken some serious steps to curb the relentless feed spamming that tends to come with the success of any social game, especially on Twitter. The game does not do any posting that’s not user-initiated. Instead it prompts the player to post to their feed only when select actions occur and offers a valuable reward on a per-post basis. If the user elects to post their action, the prompt doesn’t return for some time. “We think that people will be more likely to play our game if they see one good post every few hours rather than a dozen meaningless posts from the same user in 10 minutes,” notes Robert Nelson, CEO of Broken Bulb. So what is this ‘one good post’? When the player elects to do so, NinjaWarz posts a short message detailing the outcome of a battle as well as a link to a flash-based replay of the actual fight. That’s right, friends can actually watch the exact fight that the player saw in the game prior to ever having to sign up for NinjaWarz.
Broken Bulb emphasizes the fact that NinjaWarz is still in an early beta stage and has several more enhancements and game elements in development. There’s even talk of in-game gambling (with virtual currency of course) in a coming update. It’ll be exciting to see how that is implemented. You can sign up for NinjaWarz by going to http://NinjaWarz.com and logging in with your Twitter credentials.