Real-time web and the future of social networking dominated the agenda at LeWeb 2009 in Paris.
The annual conference brought together thousands of industry people to take part in discussions of the latest technologies and trends.
Star speakers on the opening day included Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Twitter platform director Ryan Sarver, Facebook developer Ethan Beard and MySpace Chief Operating Officer Mike Jones, as all three social networking sites announced new features designed to capture more users. One of these being Twitter’s ‘Square’ that enables credit card payments on mobile phones.
Social media was also well represented in the conference’s Startup Competition, organised in partnership with TechCrunch Europe. Entries from over hundred companies were shortlisted to 16 candidates that were presented to the judges and audience for a Q&A session.
This year the first place was grabbed by ‘Stribe’ with their instant community network tool. The plug-and-play product enables anyone to install a social network on their site in few minutes. After a simple registration, users are provided with a single-line JavaScript to be placed in the website template – and voilà, a social network is ready to be used.
Kamel Zeroual, the creator of Stribe, described the benefits of his innovation on L’Atelier website. As the popularity of social networks increase, it is feared that companies will lose control of their brands. Bringing the conversation to their own website, they are not only able to get to know their customers better, but are now also provided with a safer way to engage their audience to conversation, Zeroual said.
The second place in the competition went to Tigerlily, a company that provides Facebook tools to make community management easier for companies. With their punchline; “More fans, more leads, more sales”, Tigerlily is aiming their product at large brands, agencies and media groups that want to get more from their brand in social media.
Claiming the third place was an Ireland-based company CloudSplit with a real-time analytics tool to help businesses understand how their cloud computing costs are broken down.
TechCrunch reporter Basheera Khan wrote about CloudSplit: “This is pretty exciting stuff, when you consider that Amazon itself doesn’t have a solution like this for its own customers.”
Sources: CNN, TechCrunch, L’Atelier
Tags: Conference, Digital, social media
Posted in News Roundup