I just can't take any list seriously, that has a twitter app in the top 10.

   #10 HootSuite, Vancouver - A Twitter toolbox that manages multiple Twitter profiles

HootSuite lets a multi-person social media team manage tweets in a web based app that doesnt need to be downloaded (I'm a user). This can actually be a real business, unlike, oh, 90% of the twitter apps out there. Just because most of them are toys doesnt mean they all are.

HootSuite is one of only 3 listed that I'd heard of (HootSuite, FreshBooks, NowPublic), and I'd heard of it in a business context where people would pay -- a technical team at a Major Company sharing responsibility for a support Twitter account. So the dismissiveness is unwarranted.

they may be fine as a stand alone business, but not as a top 10 business for an entire country

The list is supposed to be the top 20 web 2.0 businesses, not all businesses or even all tech businesses.

and would you say that those are the 20 top web 2.0 businesses for the entire country? I just don't believe that.

I'm not sure, I don't really follow web 2.0 stuff. The list does seem a bit West-coast biased though. I can think of other Canadian tech and software companies (Idée, for example) that are more interesting to me than HootSuite, but it's not my list.

Some of those companies are absolute rubbish. Though voices.com looks very cool. I browsed around and if I had a need for voice acting I'd go there.

ThoughtFarmer looked like a neat idea. Then I saw their demo and pricing. $109/per seat, 100 seat minimum. For $4K I can buy an Xserve from apple that does the same thing, better.

I can't wait for the second dotcom crash.

It's great to see the Internet on fire in Canada. Most people don't realize that we have had some amazing Web companies come out of Canada, like Flickr and iStockPhoto and StumbleUpon and ClubPenguin, and it looks like we'll have a bunch more over the next few years. Congrats to all the winners!

Disclosure: I work at FreshBooks (and am very excited!)

Got an email? I've got a few questions about FreshBooks...

For sure! sunir splat freshbooks dot comm

Ottawa is completely missing from the list.

As is Kitchener-Waterloo.

That's like saying Washington DC is completely missing from the list. Ottawa city is bit of a boring town.

Ottawa has generally had a lot of tech and software (Corel, for example), so I do think it is surprising they aren't on the list. Shopify, for example, is based in Ottawa.

I've said this before and I will say it again -- any list of Canadian entrepreneurs without backtype.com on it is a sorely incomplete list. They're building real core tech that is powering dozens of other sites.

Agreed - looks like this list only includes Web 2.0 companies that are located in Canada. While Backtype was founded by Canadians, I believe they have moved to Silicon Valley??

Shopify.com should probably be on there..

Gas Buddy is missing too.