Build a Social App with Viadeo’s Graph API

• Connect with 35 million professionals worldwide
• Great prizes to win (including $15K cash!)
• Enjoy widespread media coverage and become famous

Social APIs have yet to be used in innovative and fun ways, to create new services for users.

This was a hot topic amongst: Salesforce, Klout, SimplyHired, Gigya, Context.io, 3scale, Alcatel-Lucent and Viadeo when they talked qt SF New Tech’s Bring on the APIs.

Now Viadeo is kicking off its Dev Challenge, welcoming developers to tap into Viadeo’s API to create innovative apps. The contest started on September 7^th, and will run until October 14th. The whole jury was at the API party last night, blogger Robert Scoble, SF New Tech’s Myles Weissleder, API evangelist Kin Lane, The Next Web’s Hermione Way, VC Richard Ling, Arturo Garrido and Viadeo’s CTO Christophe Thibaut.

If this awesome jury hasn’t won you over, the 20 000$ worth of prizes should do the trick! Have a look here.

You can also win cool USB flash drives by liking their Dev Challenge Facebook page & or tweet about it using the#viadeodevchallenge.

The Founder Showcase, Silicon Valley’s premier startup pitch and networking event, is taking applications to its Pitch Competition for a chance to present on stage at the event. We are not “pay-to-pitch” – any seed or early-stage company less than 2 years old and with less than $250,000 in funding is invited to apply for free – and the winners are not required to pay a dime. The deadline to apply is Sunday, October 9th, so apply today at http://foundershowcase.com/apply/. Over $20m has been raised from presenting companies – check out the Founder Showcase Hall of Fame here.

At the last event, Parisoma resident Vidcaster presented on stage. Here is their video;

This quarterly event brings together investors, founders, and members of the press for one action-packed night to network, hear talks from leading CEOs, and help launch a start-up company to greatness. The 8th Founder Showcase is scheduled for Tuesday, November 8th at the Mission Bay Conference Center, and will be our largest event to date – with over 500 in attendance. Guests will be treated to a Keynote Speech by a top technology CEO (TBA), an entertaining pitch competition judged by leading investors, and appetizers and drinks in a networking hall featuring a Demo Table Competition.

The event has sold out the last five times, and tickets start at just $55 so register today at www.FounderShowcase.com. Parisoma readers get 15% off using the discount code Parisoma 15.

Coworking from pariSoma? Don’t miss out on our tips & news!

The pariSoma team is using a new tool to help you (our community) have a better coworking experience – Scoop.it. Scoop.it is a curation tool that allows us to share important pieces of information with our community. On our page you will find pictures, announcements, coworker shout-outs, event listings, tips, tricks, and more. Be sure to check our page regularly so you don’t miss out!

Want to learn more about curation?

Check out our class: The Art of Curation: Be a Key Resource in the Digital Age, taught by coworker Axelle Tessandier.

Check out what our coworkers Papaya Mobile are up to in this post from VentureBeat/GamesBeat by Dean Takahashi

China-based maker of a mobile social networking platform for Android phones, now has more than 25 million users, up 940 percent since January 2010, the company said today.

More than 11 million paid transactions have been made using Papaya’s virtual currency, the Beijing-based company reported.

Those numbers suggest mobile app and game developers are starting to get traction on the Android platform. Papaya makes a mobile social network for game developers to use to help their games spread faster and become more social. It helps them make money by letting users buy virtual currency to spend on virtual items in games. Virtual goods have fueled huge companies on two fronts to date — in Asian social networks and on Facebook. Now the question is, can they fuel big mobile social game companies?

The Papaya network generates an average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) of $22.60 per month. On average, one in five users purchases Papaya’s virtual currency in social games that use the Papaya Game Engine, which is used to develop social mobile games. Those are pretty good figures, given that mobile users have historically paid less money for games than social gamers. Papaya said the ARPPU is more than $10 per month for social games that were built using the Papaya Game Engine. And popular titles earn more than $20,000 in revenue per month.

“We think, when it comes to monetization of mobile games, we have superior metrics,” said Paul Chen, head of developer relations at PapayaMobile. “We think that mobile games are gaining in momentum as an industry.”

And, get this, the top amount spent by a single user on the Papaya network is $4,440. Yes, somebody spent that much money for virtual goods in a game. That’s what you call engagement.

By region, China has shown the fastest growth in Papaya network user numbers, up 500 percent from January 2011. Europe is up 224 percent and the U.S. is up 222 percent. Users have sent 93 million messages across the Papaya network and have played more than 874 million game sessions. Chen said Papaya’s numbers are much better than estimated numbers rival Ngmoco has seen on the Android Market in the four weeks since it launched its Mobage mobile social network.

PapayaMobile was founded in 2008 and has 50 employees. Rivals include Gree/OpenFeint, DeNA/Ngmoco, and RIM/Scoreloop. PapayaMobile offers its own Game Engine software development kit as well as tools to make games more social with chat and leaderboard functions. It also has a monetization engine that helps games make money via offers and other means.

The company has raised $22 million to date from DCM and Keytone Ventures. Developers have integrated the Papaya Engine into 350 games.

Continuing on my coworking journey through Europe in August, (this proved to be a challenging month to find Europeans working in August), I had the pleasure of visiting COWORKLISBOA.

COWORKLISBOA was the very first coworking space in Portugal and opened its doors to the public in February 2010. Founder Fernando Mendes explains:

“I was working at home since 2002 and I was sick of it. Getting lazy and fat. Then, in 2008-2009 I started hearing about this new way of working [coworking], how it was quickly growing around the world, etc. I said to my wife “this is really what I’d love to do”. Working out of the house again and have people around me! For more than 10 years I was the head of design in several companies of the same group… At first we tried to find spaces around us or maybe downtown but we were getting nowhere with high rents or unsexy spaces. At this point, a friend working at LX Factory, told me about how it’d be great to have a coworking space at this old industrial venue. I sent a single email to the responsible and was surprised to get an appointment set for the same day. The rest is (now) history. We oponed COWORKLISBOA in one month”

The building where COWORKLISBOA is located in is truly unique. The LX factory was an industrial factory at the turn of the 20th century that was abandoned for years. Now it is a haven for creative minds, companies and individuals.

COWORKLISBOA’s community is a unique one. Their coworkers range from: TV producers to a nurse to website developers to a coworker who runs experiments on flies! And unlike the community here at pariSoma – the majority of coworkers have dedicated desks and a shared open space is rarely used. Another difference is that COWORKLISBOA is co-run. There is no dedicated team that solely works on the space, everyone has a separate project.

The space has an amazing feel and oozes with creativity. The walls are covered in murals, chalk board spaces, and interesting pieces of art. They share the floor with the likes of O’Neill and WeSC. Check out these photos that I snapped!

The welcome chalk board and lockers for coworkers.

Some of the art in the space.

The “Living Room” space for coworkers to relax.

Some of the dedicated desks – not too busy in August!

Loved the innovative seating! These fun colored seats were used throughout Lisbon – there’s a place for you to sit and a place for a tree to grow out of!

This was one of my favorite parts of the space – communal headphones. WeSC provided a head phone tree free for coworkers to use, as long as they returned them to the tree at the end of the day.

My sweet work space for the day. Thanks COWORKLISBOA I had a great time and we at pariSoma would love to have you visit us in San Francisco!

Cross-posted from faberNovel’s blog:

From Jason Cohen and others:

1. I built this software for myself, and then it turned out a million people wanted it exactly how I originally envisioned it.
2. I wish we had spent less time talking to prospective customers before designing interfaces and writing code.
3. Thanks to a software patent we filed, we never had a serious competitor.
4. Our most effective marketing campaigns where the ones filled with buzzwords and non-specific claims.
5. I wish I had spent more time reading and weighing the pros and cons of various philosophies instead of just jumping in and doing what I thought was morally and financially sensible.
6. Those arguments about the name, logo, and design color were critical to our eventual success with Enterprise customers! (CliffElam)
7. I learned everything I needed to know about starting and running a successful business by reading blogs. (anactofgod)
8. I new exactly what I was doing when I started so I didn’t have to learn anything along the way. (Alisa)
9. I am glad we interviewed customers and did not move forward with our product until we got 40+ people to tell us they will buy our product when launched! (Ricardo D. Sanchez)
10. Everyone I spoke to about starting the business agreed that it was a good idea. (Max)

Sources: Jason Cohen, 10 things I’ve never heard a successful startup founder say

At pariSoma, we continue expanding our education series. This week we’d like to highlight our classes that will take place on a Tuesday during August and September. Sign up for these classes before they get filled out!

Where Is Everyone?!: The Remote Project Manager’s Arsenal: Aug 9: (Education @pariSoma) Specifically designed with the remote project manager in mind, this class will cover tips that go beyond watercooler politics and planning agendas. Methods will be applicable to MiF-carrying PM’s and jetsetting entrepreneurs, to office bees who occasionally work from home… or anyone who has to work with other humans.

Get the most out of your Business with Google Apps!: Sept 6: (Education @pariSoma) For all those startups or small companies under a budget who have not yet made their jump to Google, now is the time! If your enterprise has less than ten employees, you can make use of Google Apps' FREE version for your messaging, scheduling and document management business needs. In this course, you will learn how to understand and bring about Google Apps' potential.

How to Create YouTube Videos that Sell!: Sept 20: (Education @pariSoma) With YouTube being the #2 search engine on Google, videos are a golden opportunity to get exposure for your brand or product.  Unfortunately, many people are going about it in the wrong way, which leaves them with a lot of videos that no one wants to watch. In this workshop you will learn the essential ingredients for making videos and get the chance to practice visual storytelling so that viewers want to share, engage and retell your message.

Interested in teaching a course at pariSoma? We’d love to have you – just let us know.

Juniper Research has released a report suggesting that annual smartphone shipments will triple by the year 2016. They estimate that smartphones will overtake feature phones and reach one billion shipments every year. Competition in the smartphone market is intense and Juniper expects a price war leading to $150 budget smartphones. The report suggests that the price drop will be largely due to ease of development on open-source OS’ especially android and falling costs of key components.

• Smartphone market to increase 230% in 5 years.
• New competitors likely to develop economy smart phones.
• Demand for higher-end phones to remain robust due to new features.

Source: Juniper Research Press Release

Consumer Reports announced that consumers are not as excited about near-field communications payments as the tech industry paints them to be, and apparently, nor should they be. The report highlights a number of challenges presented by using cell phones and digital wallets in lieu of traditional cards. Of consumers polled, only 5% have used their phones to pay for something in the last month, perhaps understandably low considering the age of the technology, however of those who have used it one in four faced significant transaction errors. While a usability gap remains between digital wallets and traditional cards, analysts at Juniper research still believe that the mobile payments market will triple to $670B.

• Problems remain with transaction errors, security and fees.
• Consumers reluctant to switch from established payment methods.
• Optimism about growth as technology spreads.

Source: GigaOM – Consumers need to be sold on the benefits of mobile payments