Nearly 50 per cent of recruiters say referrals are the leading source of quality hires. And once you've asked for one and applied for the job, you're 4X more likely to hear back from a recruiter at that company. LinkedIn's new Ask For A Referral tool lets you search for jobs available in your own network and, with a click, you can ask a connection to make an introduction to the person doing the hiring.

Canadians can now shop in Instagram. Businesses can tag products to lead shoppers to more information (like price and availability) and to actually make a purchase right from the Instagram app.

Facebook's new store sales optimization brings the power of machine learning to help retailers show ads to the people who are most likely to make an in store purchase. New templates for collections ads are designed to deliver the rich experience of print catalogues on mobile. New dynamic ad categories lets advertisers reach people earlier in their shopping journeys.

In an effort to help people distinguish what's real and what's fake news, Google is launching its News Initiative. The idea is elevate and strengthen quality journalism by making adjustments to the algorithm towards more authoritative content. In addition, the program will support news organizations in evolving sustainable business models by helping them to diversify their revenue streams. A third objective is to empower news organizations via technological innovation such as supporting virtual reality and providing easy, secure connections for journalist working around the world.

Pinterest is opening up shopping ads to more retailers following a successful pilot program. Most of Pinterest’s content is business related as users share products they might be interested in buying some day. Shopping Ads automatically create promoted pins from an existing product feed making advertising an effortless task for retailers.