startupi

SocialSmart and Amanaie were present at the Digiday:APPS conference in NYC on August 12th. SocialSmart is based in NY and SP, and includes Startupi in its Brazilian investments.

Digiday:APPS, www.digidayapps.com , is the leading conference for producers and sponsors of apps and widgets running on Facebook, the iPhone and OpenSocial platforms. As partner in SocialSmart and Amanaie, I participated in a panel discussion on apps and also presented a keynote on the opportunities around growth of the OpenSocial platform. Other participants included KickApps, RockYou and appssavvy and there was a special keynote by Jason Calicanis, CEO of Mahalo.

The demand for apps as a marketing vehicle has grown dramatically in the two years since Facebook opened its platform to all developers. In particular there has been a response by other social networks who have adopted Google’s OpenSocial standard for running apps. Among those adopting OpenSocial are MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, Hi5, Sonico, Mixi, CyWorld, Friendster and others. OpenSocial now reaches over 700 million users worldwide.

One of the big questions at the conference was whether to build a custom app for a campaign or to leverage some of the networks for existing apps. The reality is that both approaches can work depending on the needs of a specific campaign. We believe a custom app supported by a campaign on existing apps is the combination that works best for creating a highly targeted message and growing and audience quickly.