More Than 700 People on the OpenSocial Week: Making the Web Better by Making it More Social

Organized by Globant and Google, the event ended with the OpenSocial Hackathon, where more than 16 new applications for social networks based on OpenSocial were developed and showcased  

Buenos Aires, May, 2008.- Globant, Latin American Leader in Software Product Development and Maintenance, and Google organized the OpenSocial Week from April 28th to May 3rd, a week entirely dedicated to social networks, applications development and the new standard Opensocial.

How do you decide which social network is more accurate for your Business? How do you take advantage of several at the same time? OpenSocial arrived as an answer to these questions. It´s time to meet this innovative Marketing tool for companies.

Globant and Google, along with MySpace, Vostu, Sonico, Mentez, Hi5 and Joyent, organized different events that gathered more than 700 people:

•Tech Talks in different universities (Unicen from Tandil, ITBA, UTN, UADE, UCEMA, UBA)
•Event Social Network for Marketers, for Marketing Executives. More than 350 experts came to the pub Bahrein to learn about social networks as a promotion and marketing tool.  
•OpenSocial Hackathon, the first Hackathon ever held in Argentina. During the day, more than 100 developers built applications based on OpenSocial.

“We are extremely happy with the results of the OpenSocial Week,” explained Guibert Englebienne, Globant´s CTO. “In all the events we discussed with different audiences the possibilities brought by social networks. It was an excellent chance to get into this new movement and keep on the track of being leader in new trends.”

OpenSocial Hackathon winners
During the Hackathon held on Saturday, May 3rd, more than 100 developers created applications based on OpenSocial. Agustín Baretto, the team formed by Martín Billelo and Maximiliano Ríos, and the one formed by Federico Adad and Martín Conte were the winners of the first Hackathon ever held in Argentina. They were rewarded with ipods and a balloon trip for building these applications:
1st place: Agustín Baretto with “Mobile Agenda”, an application that allows the users to send text messages to cell phones through social networks.  
2nd place: Martín Billelo and Maximiliano Ríos with “Prode”, an application to bet on soccer forecasts.
3rd place: Federico Abad and martin Conte with “Mirador”, an application to let users talk via web-cam

Why social networks?
The list of social networks keeps on growing (hi5, MySpace, Sonico, Vostu, Friendster, Plaxo, Ning, Facebook, Orkut and Salesforce.com are some examples) while they become an indispensable tool for Marketing strategies. All of them together have more than 200 millions of users, groups with defined interests, established contacts and eagerness to create relationships. For companies and developers, getting into the world of social networks means to get in touch with the biggest distribution and communication channels of these days.

What´s OpenSocial?
OpenSocial defines a common API for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds. More information in: www.opensocial.org

 Acerca de Globant
Globant is the Latin American leader in software product development and maintenance outsourcing. With a rational blended approach to leveraging Open-Source and proprietary software, Globant gives companies agility and flexibility while mitigating risk and reducing total cost of ownership. Globant’s proprietary SmartStaffing Technology™ yields high performance teams that enable companies to quickly develop their software products faster and gain an edge in the competitive landscape with the lowest total cost of ownership. Globant is a privately held, privately funded company headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina with offices in Tandil and La Plata in Argentina, Palo Alto, Phoenix and Boston in the United States, Mexico City and London. For more information, visit www.globant.com.