Image of Innovators from BC Business

Continuing on with the News Round-up catch up … in late April, Invoke Media / HootSuite were listed at #5 in BC Business Magazine’s 2010 Guide to Innovation which included B.C.’s 20 best companies at executing world-changing technology. The Invoke team covered the event in the post: Breaking The Top 5: Invoke & HootSuite recognized as innovators.

Certainly we’re pleased to share the list from our home province with companies in diverse industries from urban development, space exploration, pollsters, computer chip makers, citizen news aggregation, e-commerce, alternative fuels, and global auctioneers.

Danielle Egan wrote an in-depth piece after an interview with CEO Ryan Holmes and members of the HootSuite Board of Directors. She chronicles our relationship with founding agency Invoke and  the big picture of the changing paradigms of media creation. Here are a few snippets:

Within six months of launching, HootSuite was the app of choice for 100,000 tweeters, and a year later it had received numerous awards. The company has adapted it for LinkedIn, Wordpress and Facebook’s estimated 350 million users, as well as a mobile app for iPhone. HootSuite now has 400,000 users including Disney, Fox, the U.S. Army and Dell, along with thousands of individuals from power-bloggers to amateurs.

Hear Ryan Holmes and other BC innovators discuss other innovators at the award gala

“Today everyone is a media channel,” says Holmes, who starts each day groping for his iPhone and uses words like “truthiness” and “stickiness” when describing effective social media brands and technologies. “Corporations need tools to deal with that constant stream of information quickly.”

Of course, like Twitter and Facebook, HootSuite is feeling the pressure to monetize. Until recently it was bankrolled by Invoke Media, which Holmes co-founded in 2000, but this past January HootSuite became an independent company. That’s when HootSuite received $1.9 million in financing from venture-capital firms including Hearst Interactive and Blumberg Capital (Holmes became the new company’s CEO, while maintaining his stake and position with Invoke). HootSuite aims to turn a profit by mid-2010, with new apps and mobile partnerships in the pipeline and plans to charge corporate users a nominal fee.

Members of HootSuite Media Inc.’s Board of Directors add their comments saying:

“Hootsuite will still be the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to get a grip on disruptive mass communication platforms like Twitter and Facebook,” says investor David Blumberg, the 50-year-old managing partner of Blumberg Capital and a specialist in social media technologies, who compares his pre-HootSuite Twitter experiences to “drinking from a fire hose.” By contrast, “Hootsuite filters that torrent of information and makes it useful whether you’re an individual or a corporation.”

Tools like Twitter have levelled the playing field, says Blumberg, who notes that as the debate on social media’s stickiness percolates, the pace and clout of online communities accelerates. “Younger generations live and swim in this soup. It has smashed traditional hierarchies. Corporations can’t hide out like dictators. They have to dive in.” Whether brands sink or swim, HootSuite is clearly riding the wave.

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@wyclef + @hootsuite owl = destiny - photo by Kelly Samardak

In 2009, HootSuite won “Best App” at the Shorty Awards and the executives basked in the accolades from CNN’s Rick Sanchez and Wyclef Jean among other web luminaries. This year, we hope to do it all over again and we need your help.

Fortunately, @shortyawards make the process painless with a pre-prepped Twitter-sized post, with room for your reasons for voting for HootSuite.

Simply visit Shorty Awards, choose “hootsuite” and “apps” and add your motivations and true feelings. Be sure to tweet your vote with something like this:

Vote for HootSuite for Shorty Awards in best #apps

In the spirit of fair-play, here are other finalists for Shorty Award Best App:

mr. unfollowr

TweetDeck

COLOURlovers

HootSuite

MailChimp

AggreTweet

You can see that HootSuite needs a lil help from our friends. Let’s rock the vote! Can you spare a daily vote until February 5th? We know we can count on you

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Specifically, HootSuite was included in the “Emerging Rockets 2010 – Internet, Wireless and New Media” category. Joining HootSuite on the Emerging Rockets list are some other fine Internet, wireless and new media companies: Aegis Mobility, AppSocial, EcoBuddies, Mobidia, Mingleverse, Tagga Media – congrats to each.

Here’s how the Rocket Builders describe themselves:

Ready to Rocket is a unique business recognition list that profiles technology companies with the greatest potential for revenue growth. Each year, based on analysis of trends that will drive growth in the information technology sector, Rocket Builders identifies twenty-five (25) private companies that are best positioned to capitalize on the trends for growth. This selection methodology has been an accurate predictor of growth with “Ready to Rocket” companies exceeding the industry growth rate. Also, many of these companies raise investment capital and each year many of the profiled “Ready to Rocket” companies are acquired.

Follow along with Ready to Rocket’s news via Twitter: @readytorocket and/or #r2r. Also worth reading the follow-up stories about the 2009 awardees.

Of course, Techvibes is covering the story with 2010 Ready to Rocket list announced and we’ll keep an eye out for more coverage.

Vancouver’s Rocket Builders announced their eighth annual Ready to Rocket 25 list this evening naming 25 privately held BC companies that are “best positioned to capitalize on the 2010 technology sector trends that will lead them to faster growth than their peers”.

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The results are in! HootSuite has won Mashable’s 2009 Open Web Award for Best Twitter App. We’re incredibly honoured by the vote of confidence Twitter users have shown us through the OWAs.

This award is a crowning achievement that caps off a whirlwind year for us. HootSuite has also won Shorty and Canadian New Media Awards, and was selected as a finalist in the prestigious Groundswell Awards.

A year after launching, HootSuite has become the most used Twitter web client after Twitter itself. In November, HootSuite also added Facebook and LinkedIn functionality. This month, we’ve released our iPhone app to much fanfare. Through all this, our goal is to be your go-to professional social media dashboard.

Thank you to Mashable for hosting this award, to everybody who voted for us, and to users such as yourselves for inspiring us to make the Best Twitter App!

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