Globant and Google Host OpenSocial Week to Encourage Developers to Make the Web Better by Making It More Social

Google's Developer Advocate Patrick Chanezon to speak at events held from April 28th to May 3rd

Buenos Aires, April 2008 - Globant, the Latin American leader in software product development and maintenance, and Google present OpenSocial Week, an event which will take place from Monday, April 28th to Saturday May 3rd and will be dedicated to social network application developers and the new standard OpenSocial. 
 
Globant and Google are working with Sonico, hi5, MySpace, Vostu, Mentez and Joyent to organize different events to promote the advertising potential of Social Networks and OpenSocial for the IT and Marketing industries. Google's Patrick Chanezon, Developer Advocate, will talk about the characteristics, advantages and numerous possibilities of OpenSocial to reach millions of users.   
 
On Tuesday, April 29th, at 7pm, the “Social Networks for Marketers” event will take place. During this meeting, Patrick Chanezon will introduce Social Networks as a marketing and promotion tool to specialists from different companies. The OpenSocial Week will be complemented by Tech Talks at different universities and will culminate on Saturday, May 3rd at the Globant Tech Park, where the OpenSocial Hackathon will be held. From 9am to 6pm, more than 100 developers will be invited to develop applications using the OpenSocial standard. At the end of the day, there will be a presentation of the applications and the organizers awards for the best ones.  
 
"According to the Evans Data July 2007 Global Developer Population And Demographics Report, Latin America developer population is the one that seems most promising for OpenSocial: two third of the developer population is under 30 years old, it is the second fastest growing developer population, 70% of the developers are building web applications and 74% are using JavaScript, the biggest percentages of all regions. Latin America is also host of many social networks: from global networks such as Orkut, MySpace and Hi5, to local networks such as Vostu and Sonico.
For all these reason I'm very happy that all these OpenSocial community members have joined us for the OpenSocial South America Tour: let's help developers get started with OpenSocial!," explains Patrick Chanezon, Google Developer Advocate.
 
“We are deeply committed to developing applications that increase the adoption of Open Social among different social Networks.  We have been involved with Google in the evolution of OpenSocial since it was a confidential Beta, and we continue to work with them on integrating social networks and applications”, explained Guibert Englebienne, Globant´s CTO. “We also believe that peer collaboration is bringing more innovation and creativity than ever. The OpenSocial Week is a great opportunity for promoting this innovative API among developers and Marketing experts.” 

"OpenSocial takes Social Media Marketing to the next level. In the past, programmers had to develop custom applications and widgets for each site, dealing with different formats and languages and countless integration hassles", explained Rodrigo Teijeiro, Founder and CEO of Sonico. "With OpenSocial, developers will have the unique opportunity of leveraging their creations through millions of targeted users. Along with that, advertisers will have a standard platform to promote their products and measure ad performance. Therefore, monetization will be easier for everyone."
 
"The future of social networking in Latin America lies in creating more opportunities for personalizing and localizing the experience of the millions of users who frequent them,” explains Daniel Kafie, Founder and CEO of Vostu. “The impact of truly open platforms will be exactly that - making social networking more accessible to anyone and enabling communities and applications related to any interest, demographic, or vertical to be quickly launched, and thus opening a world of possibilities not just for the users but also the advertisers who wish to segment their target audiences better as well as engage with them in a more meaningful way."

Schedule:  
·         Monday, April 28th from 5pm to 7pm: Tech Talk in UNICEN, Tandil. 
·         Tuesday, April 29th from 7pm to 10pm: Social Networks for Marketers, Bahrein (Lavalle 345) 
·         Wednesday, April 30th, from 5pm to 7pm: Tech Talk in ITBA

·         Wednesday, April 30th, from 7:30pm to 9:30pm: Tech Talk in UTN
·         Friday, May 2nd, from 2pm to 3pm: Tech Talk in UADE 
·         Friday, May 2nd, from 4:30pm to 6:30pm: Joyent Tech Talk, Cloud Computing UCEMA
·         Friday, May 2nd, from 7pm to 9pm: Tech Talk in UBA, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas 
·         Saturday, May 3rd, from 9am to 6pm: OpenSocial Hackathon, Globant Tech Park (Costa Salguero) 
More information: www.globant.com/opensocialweek 
 

What is 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 

Perfil Patrick Chanezon 
Patrick Chanezon has been Google's API Evangelist since 2005. These days his main interests are the OpenSocial API and social software, Google APIs, REST, SOAP and Ajax, Java, Groovy, Javascript, PHP, Ruby and Python. Previously he worked on portals, blogs and syndication feeds at Sun Microsystems, AOL and Netscape. He’s the co-founder of the ROME – Atom and RSS utilities in java open source project. More on his blog at http://wordpress.chanezon.com/

About 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.

About Google Inc. 
Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

About hi5 Networks, Inc. 
hi5 Networks, Inc. is a privately-held firm headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Its flagship service, hi5, was launched in 2003 and is now one of the leading social networks in the world — ranked by Alexa® as the 8th most-trafficked website globally and the #1 social network in over 20 countries, including many in Latin America, Europe and Asia. More than 80 million people in over 200 nations are currently registered for hi5, which is available in 23 language options (with more to come). Individuals use hi5 to stay connected and share information with friends and family around the world, meet new people, express their identity, discover linkages, and build relationships across a lifetime of memories. For more information, please visit www.hi5.com or www.hi5networks.com.   

About MySpace
MySpace, a unit of Fox Interactive Media Inc., is the premier lifestyle portal for connecting with friends, discovering popular culture, and making a positive impact on the world. MySpace has created a connected global community by integrating web profiles, blogs, instant messaging, e-mail, music streaming, music videos, photo galleries, classified listings, events, groups, college communities, and member forums. MySpace's international network includes more than 20 localized community sites in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Latin America, Mexico, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, India, Japan, and New Zealand. Fox Interactive Media is a division of News Corp. (NYSE:NWS - News, NWS.A - News; ASX:NWS - News, NWSLV - News).

 About Joyent
Joyent is the leader in open standards cloud computing. Joyent provides on-demand applications, compute, storage, and services to developer teams around the world. The ease with which Joyent’s solution scales to meet increased scale demands allows end-user, startups and developers to focus on their business instead of their infrastructure. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Marin County, California, Joyent serves customers around the globe in multiple languages and time zones. For more information, visit Joyent’s web site www.joyent.com.

About Vostu
Founded in 2007, Vostu is a community of Social Spheres that brings its members closer to the people, interests, and ideas they care about the most. The company develops the most cutting-edge technology in Latin America which empowers anyone to create a Social Sphere as well as join an existing one within the Vostu platform. Anyone can join our community and Vostu has partnered up with leading companies and brands to develop fully-customized Social Spheres to better reach their target audiences. Vostu is a privately-held company and is headquartered in Miami with offices in Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Sao Paulo (opening soon). For more information, visit www.vostu.com

About Sonico
Sonico is a social utility that allows users to connect with real-life friends and share information, photos and videos in a safe, organized and fun environment. Since its launch in July 2007, it has become the leading social network in Latin America, with over 14 million registered users and growing by 150.000 new users daily. Sonico is headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina with commercial offices in Mexico. For more information, visit www.sonico.com  
 
About Mentez
Mentez is a global company that creates unique marketing solutions and business models through the promotion and development of web applications that are integrated into social networks. With over 500 developers associated to its network, Mentez brainpower and expertise comes from emerging regions and developing countries. Mentez provides each of its developers an integrated system consisting of technical, legal, and commercial support, which in turn allows the company to integrate new applications and features in a fast, reliable and cost-effective way. Headquartered in Miami, Mentez has operations and presence across South America, South Africa, Turkey, and the UK.