Village Gamer

Toronto – IDC Canada has released a new study that profiles ten of these emerging companies. 10 Canadian New Media Companies to Watch (IDC #CA3TIW8), provides insight into the solutions, go-to-market strategies, partners, and customers of the profiled vendors. Their lessons learned may provide a model for other emerging companies in the Canadian technology marketplace, and help larger vendors and investors identify partnership and investment opportunities.

“New media is radically changing who is in control of information and conversations on the Web,” says Krista Napier, analyst, Canadian ICT Innovation and Export at IDC Canada. “The growing use of blogs, micro-blogging sites, broadband TV, podcasts, and social networks, to name a few, are driving a new approach to communications that is real time, and two-way, with a variety of mediums to fit the message. Canadian entrepreneurs are leveraging this phenomena to develop a number of solutions and services that are making new media more intuitive, digestible, and manageable for individuals, while providing organizations with cost-effective solutions to initiate, manage, track, listen to, and engage in conversations on a number of platforms, all while measuring their impact.”

The analysis in this study provides valuable input to ICT vendors, large and small, to identify success factors employed by emerging Canadian vendors with solutions that address New Media. Some of the key findings from this study include the following:

1. Canadian companies are targeting early adopters who recognize the value of new media but also feel the side effects, such as managing them efficiently. These customers want simple and cost-effective ways to launch, manage, and measure their new media initiatives.
2. Mainstream organizations still have a lot of questions around new media, such as “Which tools are the best fit for us?” They also have concerns around security, implementation costs, return on investment, and maintaining control of their brand. Customers will be looking for guidance and services to help them work through these issues.
3. While differentiation and visibility will be key to success, so too will be positioning new media solutions as “must haves” in a difficult economy that can both reduce costs and increase revenue opportunities.

The ten companies featured in the report (in alphabetical order) include:

1. b5media (Toronto)
2. DISTIL Interactive Ltd. (Ottawa)
3. dna13 (Ottawa)
4. Filemobile (Toronto)
5. IGLOO Inc. (Kitchener)
6. LiveHive Systems Inc. (Waterloo)
7. MyThum Interactive (Toronto)
8. Radian6 Technologies Inc. (Fredericton)
9. Statusfirm Inc. (Alberta)
10. Viigo (Toronto)

This study is one of a series of documents that IDC publishes as part of the Canadian Technology Innovation Watch report series, which tracks Canadian ICT companies including software, hardware, services, and communications companies from across Canada. The series examines emerging companies, their solutions, and why they have been successful.

DISTIL CEO Robert Thompson reflected on being profiled by IDC, “It’s gratifying to be recognized for our efforts to differentiate ourselves in an increasingly dynamic new media sector by concentrating on learning games rather than entertainment games.”

Thompson continued, “DISTIL, which recently garnered two awards at the DevLearn conference in San Jose, distinguishes itself through a focus on interactive assessment-based learning combining gaming and data mining to enhance both the learning experience and the organization’s ability to quantify student performance.”