brian blum
YPG re-launches API with 1.5 million business listings
Canada’s Yellow Pages Group (YPG) has re-launched its YellowAPI. The move is slightly surprising given Yellow’s preoccupation with debt and a crumbling stock price. That plus the fact that, although nearly 2,000 software developers signed up for YellowAPI since it launched in 2010, only 35 apps have been created. Do the math: that’s a paltry 2% of developers. Not the best follow-through. But then, as we said, Yellow has been a bit distracted. Continue reading
Want applicant’s social-media password? Don’t try it in Canada (or anywhere!)
By Brian Blum
Here’s a trend that seems outright outrageous to us: asking for a job applicant’s social-media passwords.
It’s been in the news for the past few years, off-and-on, especially during the past few weeks. Today, the Toronto Star has an article about a candidate for a law enforcement job who was asked to share his Facebook password with the recruiter. He wasn’t just asked to “friend” the recruiter, and when he offered to show his profile on the laptop in the interview room, the recruiter insisted on receiving the password.
The article in the Star came in reaction to a flurry of reports in the U.S. and U.K. about the occasional use of this distressing practice. Asking for an applicant’s password for a job with the police jobs seems to be the most common – Bloomberg BusinessWeek cites examples from Virginia, Montana and Maryland – while The Telegraph writes about an online retail company employee in the U.K. who was asked to hand over his login details after his employer went trolling on Facebook and couldn’t find any personal details on the worker.
Facebook itself is up Continue reading
Canada’s Point2 adds foreclosures tab to real estate web portal
In a sign that the home foreclosure heartbreak has not abated, Canadian property portal Point2 has announced the release of a dedicated foreclosures tab on its Point2Homes website. Data for the section comes from a variety of sources including banks and local MLS’s, which can upload an automated feed to Point2Homes.
Point2Homes is Point2’s own classified site; the company also syndicates foreclosure inventory to more than 50 third party consumer partner sites and search engines.
Point2Homes has links to mini-sites covering every U.S. state but, as a Canada-based company, the Toronto area has the lion’s share of listed properties. Point2Homes also has links to countries around the world, but other than a few English-speaking countries (the U.K., Australia and South Africa), most of these have no data (a bit deceptive, in our opinion). On the other hand, at least there are no foreclosures either…
Canadian study: group buying sites then and now – the path to success
Call it “the wisdom of the crowds” or “herd mentality.” A new study from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management in Canada claims that the reason group buying sites are so hot is that “users draw conclusions on quality from the number of people that have signed up.”
That may not sound so radical, but consider why today’s group buying sites are succeeding where older services like Mercata and MobShop failed: the latter deterred potential buyers by leaving them “waiting for days before confirming whether or not they had got the offer they had signed up for.” Continue reading
New Canadian group deal aggregator
There are plenty of aggregation sites that bundle together all the group buying deals in a single web location. Canadians now have a new one.
PromotionalCode.ca last week launched its own group deals aggregation service. There’s nothing mind blowing about PromotionalCode.ca’s new offering, other than it being a part of a larger site that aggregates Internet and in-store discount codes (i.e., $10 off at The Gap), printable coupons and freebies. That makes for a nice synergy, in our opinion, though it’s not at all clear if that can cut through the clutter of similar Canada-specific sites – from DealBot and Yipit, to our favorite: the amusingly-named BargainMoose (although Miser McGee comes in a close second).
GroupBuyingCanada has a list of the 40 top sites it’s watching, including the aforementioned Bullwinkle site.
Comscore: Canada tops in online engagement
Take a guess which country is the world leader in online engagement? Chances are Canada wouldn’t have been at the tip of your tongue, but according to new data from Comscore in its 2012 Canada Digital Future in Focus report, Canadian web users spend an average of 45 hours online per month, more than in any other country.
The study also had some other interesting findings:
- Facebook is “nearing” its saturation point in Canada while there is “still room” for other social networks to grow (Comscore points specifically to Twitter and LinkedIn as the services with the most potential).
- Online video views in Canada are up 58 percent with YouTube accounting for half of all online video viewing in Canada.
- Smartphone penetration has reached 45 percent in Canada; daily usage is growing by 50 percent.
In the report, Comscore is understandably upbeat about the direction the digital media industry is moving in Canada. “It’s evolving in extraordinary ways,” Bryan Segal, Comscore’s Canada VP said in a release on the new report. “2012 is poised to be a defining year for digital as consumers grow their engagement with social, video, mobile and other emerging media.”
- Zillow Introduces Zillow Partnership Platform
- HomeFinder.com Launches 2012 Agent Makeover Sweepstakes
- Quick Response Codes made available for Classified Liners with AdPerfect Classified Advertising Solution Release 2.9
- Audi, Chevrolet, and Volkswagen Rate Highest in Automotive Advertising ‘Best Practices’ With Messages of Efficiency and Innovation
- Yahoo! Names Fred Amoroso Chairman and Appoints Ross Levinsohn Interim CEO
- Tweet It, Like It, Watch It, Buy It. Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide’s New Study Finds 95 Million Americans Use Social Media To Shop
- Working Moms Taking Less Maternity Leave, CareerBuilder’s Annual Mother’s Day Survey Finds
- TheHomePage.com.au launches Chinese listings
- planetRE Launches Cutting Edge Online Marketing and Transaction Tools for Property Rentals and Management
- Groupon Merchant Satisfaction Beats Industry Benchmarks
