Congrats to Claudia Moore

Everyone at Tynt wants to extend our biggest congrats to Claudia Moore and her husband Mike as they welcome Cate (also known as Baby 1.0) into their family.  Claudia has been awesome to work with at Tynt as she has helped to craft our marketing materials and vision.

Claudia was also recently selected as one of Calgary’s Top 40 Under 40 (http://www.calgaryinc.ca/40under40/claudia-moore) a well deserved honor for someone who has put so much effort into everything she does. (in fact, they refer to her as the Superwoman Of The Calgary Tech Community!)

Way to go Claudia!

Tynt CEO Speaks on the Future of Social Networking at CCAT Event

I had the pleasure of speaking to the Calgary Council of Advanced Technologies breakfast seminar on the Future of Social Networking.  It was a fun, coffee-fueled morning.  TechVibes and OneDegree both covered the event and had some great things to say.  You can read them yourself via these links:

TechVibes

OneDegree

PRESS RELEASE: Canada’s Largest Social Network Acts as Launch Pad for Alberta-Born Internet Company

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Canada’s Largest Social Network Acts as Launch Pad for Alberta-Born Internet Company

Alberta born internet start-up, Tynt, announces first commercial deployment of leading overlay technology in partnership with Nexopia.com, Canada’s largest youth networking platform.

(October 9, 2008. Calgary, Canada) – Tynt today announced the launch of their new online communications overlay product as part of an exclusive integration partnership with Nexopia.com, Canada’s largest teen networking site. An innovator in online communities, Nexopia boasts over 1.3 million members and 1 billion pages served per month making them the largest Canadian platform as well as the second most trafficked internet company in the nation*.

Said Tynt CEO Derek Ball about the partnership with Nexopia: “One of Tynt’s primary goals is to help social networks increase user engagement by offering a fun and interactive communications tool. The Nexopia community is uniquely creative and highly communicative so we felt right away that our product was the perfect fit- and it’s great having Canada’s largest teen network right in our own backyard.”

Tynt’s next generation social application allows users to add their personality, humor and creativity on top of web pages and share it with friends. Branded as “Graffiti” on Nexopia, the partnership is aimed at offering users unique functionality that they won’t find on communities like Facebook and Myspace. User growth has already proved tremendous over the first week with the number of “Graffiti” created topping 20,000 in just 7 days.

Said Nexopia CEO Boris Wertz of the partnership: “Our members are always on the lookout for creative ways to stay connected. Tynt’s product adds great value to the Nexopia experience and we’re very excited to see how quickly it’s being adopted.”

About Tynt

Tynt develops leading edge Web 2.0 products that allow social networks and other online communities increase user engagement and maximize revenue. Tynt was founded in 2007 by a team of experienced entrepreneurs in Calgary. The company is privately funded by its founders and a select few angel investors.

About Nexopia

Founded in 2003 by 18 year old Timo Ewalds, Nexopia.com has since become the most popular social networking utility for Canadian youth with over 1.3 million registered members and over a billion pages served per month. Always a passionate innovator, Nexopia is dedicated to developing new technologies to help young people stay connected with friends as well as express themselves online.

GeoCentric PodCast uses Tynt For Research

Hat tip and thanks to John Newman and Nate Long from Geocentric (http://bringthemagic.com/geocentric/) for using Tynt for their podcast research and telling their audience about what a great tool it is!

A few quotes from their show:

” I have discovered a Firefox extension that I cannot live without I am using it to help myself keep notes on websites.  Its called TYNT.  I highly recommend it.  You sign up with an account and it will let you go in an highlight sections of a web page and save them for you and you can pull them up later.  It lets you leave notes for yourself.  Its great!” <John>

“I am pretty jealous cause I just have a bunch of tabs open and nothing cool like John.”

“Yeah, its awesome, you can make speech and thought bubbles. It even has political campaign stickers. AND you can email it to your friends.” <John>

” I am going to be all over it for the next show…” <Nate>

“We would like to give a shoutout to Friends at Tynt.com. “

Check out their show at http://bringthemagic.com/geocentric/

Tynt VP Biz Dev wins Top 40 Under 40 Award

A big congratulations to Kerri Knull who was selected from a huge pool of candidates as one of the Top 40 Under 40 in Calgary (a city of well over a million people).  We’re proud of your Kerri!  You can read Kerri’s details in Calgary Inc.’s Magazine at this link http://tynted.com/0LW5YMsK30b

Derek Ball speaking at CCAT Breakfast

For anyone in the Calgary area interested in hearing some of our thoughts on the evolution of social media, I’m speaking at the CCAT breakfast on Oct 15th.  TechVibes discusses the event here. Details on the event and cost are on the CCAT Website.

Tynt and IVAC connect

TechVibes posted this link yesterday of the IVAC AGM.  Tynt was there as IVAC is participating in Tynt’s current financing round (stay tuned for details on this in this blog in the near future!).

How to get the most from the Tynt Beta

Firstly to all Tynt Beta testers we send out a big “thank you” for helping us develop and evolve Tynt for you!

We work hard at Tynt to develop our product to be a user driven experience.  There’s many ways to use Tynt and a broad range of different ages and lifestyles creating Tynts with our beta.  We’d like to share with you some of the popular ways of Tynting on the web:

1) Jokes and fun
Oh, yes people, Tynt can be some seriously fun stuff! The more imaginative you are, the funnier things can get. People often share Internet jokes with Tynt, and more importantly make jokes using Tynt with the web as a canvas! People have also mentioned that it’s nice to be able to share silly fun things with “privacy” and to certain friends.

We see a lot of amazing speech bubble jokes, and imaginative use of our Stickers. There’s really no limit to all the laughs that Tynt can offer. Oh and I really enjoy seeing Tynt used for laughs, so if you got “a good one” I’d love to check it out! I’m ian[at]tynt[dot]com.

2) Sharing discussions of web sites and stories
One of the most popular ways of using Tynt has been to have conversations about something on a website. We’ve heard everything from shopping and celebrity gossip, to article discussions and stock evaluations between friends and co-workers. At Tynt we all use the Notes and Speech tools multiple times a day to keep each other informed of web happenings!

3) Research and marking websites
Tynt’s a great way to store websites for researching something. With the use of Notes your thoughts can be put into context right on the website. It’s also nice to have something for jogging the ‘ol memory for later reference and scanning!

You can also go back to any prior Tynt you had made and share or re-share it with someone! Tynt offers friends, classmates and colleagues a lot more than just bookmarks when following your cookie crumb trail!

4) Tell us what you want!
Remember Tynt is still in beta. That means the future of our product relies on the beta testers to tell us what they want.

The most important of my job is to listen to users. Although I can’t promise everything that people request will get developed, I can and will promise that each and every one of you will be heard.

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Well I hope some of this is useful, thanks again for your interest and happy Tynting!

BBQ at Blair’s

Diep and Blair hosted a BBQ in their nice new home in the Scarboro area with a decent showing of Tynt crew.

The hamburger spread was killer! Nearly everything you could imagine was available, especially for those “custom” burger touches like: sautéed mushrooms, cooked AND raw onions, mayonnaise, pineapple slices, etc. Diep made a lovely salad (and home made dressing). Simply delicious.

Oh, and on a trivial observation note, I never realized that 3 of our (Caucasian) developers had Asian counterparts. So take these “Asian partners”, add some cousins from Diep’s family, Mike Wong (our Prod Mgr) and myself, suddenly the ratio of Asians being a minority was in serious question. A less informed guest may have expected fried rice and spring rolls… With a Technology hardware or distribution company an Asian stereotype would surprise no one, but a 2.0 Internet Start Up BBQ, really? I love it.