API Mashup Contest Of Germany Attracts 70 Projects, Google APIs Are The Most Used Ones

Online, January 12, 2012 (Newswire.com) - Social shopping, smart hotel finder and Google+ Counter are the top three API Mashups in the autumn round 2011 of the contest.

The autumn 2011 round of the API Mashup Contest attracted some 70 projects, mainly from Europe. Each judge selected his top 10 projects. Ten points for every number one position, one point for the position 10.

The top 5 positions are:

1. Suitts Me, http://www.suitts.me, 53 points

SuittsMe is a social shopping network that allows users to share and discuss clothes they want to buy. "In real life we don't go shopping alone, but we go with friends because we want their advice and opinions," say the founders Andrew Fan and Gleb Pitsevich, who run a team of young developers from Belarus.

2. Hotel Maps, http://www.hotelmaps.com, 44 points

Hotelmaps.com is a hotel finder built around maps. For each hotel, an icon with the room rate and hotel star rating is displayed on a map. Room rates and star ratings are permanently visible on the map, allowing the user to see the most relevant information at a glance: location, price and rating. This sets HotelMaps.com apart from other map based hotel finders, which usually use dots or markers on the map, without immediately visible pricing information. Right from the start, more than 200,000 hotels worldwide can be found. The founders Michael and Andreas Bogen have years of experience in developing vertical search engines in Germany.

3. Google+ Counter, http://www.gpc.fm, 39 points

Google+ Counter is one of the first services leveraging the new Google social network, Google+. It has helped thousands of users to find interesting people on Google+ in its first weeks of operation. Since the introduction of the Google+ API it has been visited by more than 50,000 users per day. The founder Ralf Rottmann is an experienced German entrepreneur making an effort to fully utilise all the latest Web technologies.

4. Interviewer, http://www.interviewr.com, 38 points

The interviewr.com makes scheduling and conducting interviews easy. Roger Stringer, the founder has 12 years experience in software development and 10 years involved in startups in Canada.

5. Helioid, http://www.helioid.com, 26 points

Using Helioid search refinement tools you can find and explore what you are looking for by interactively narrowing your search results. It's mashing up results from several engines to put together a solid search experience for users. Helioid is a visual search and aggregation tool that enables exploration of information by dynamically categorizing a large number of search results based on their content.

"The competition was tough this time - some 20 projects appeared frequently in Jury members' top 10s," says Contest founder Pavel Curda. The next step is to help the projects get what they need - mentoring, business advice, help with getting additional team members, seed finance -to maximise the projects' chances of turning into successful and viable start-ups. This help also includes tens of mentoring sessions from the judges - mostly top league Germany-based angel investors. Several European business accelerators/incubators have expressed an interest in hosting projects viable for investment.

The people behind the registered projects by and large are very committed - roughly one quarter of them are already involved full-time, one half part-time (more than 10 hours a week) and one quarter spend less than 10 hours a week working on their projects. Two thirds of the projects seek mentoring advice, 70% of the projects seek people to join their teams - they are interested mainly in marketers, developers and graphic designers.

Google, Facebook and Twitter APIs were the most popular. The high number of registered projects and good quality of them was surprising to everyone. The most frequently used APIs in registered mashups included Google Maps (19), followed by Facebook Graph API (15), Twitter and YouTube (each used 14 times). A Google API was used by two thirds of the registered mashups.

Comments from the judges

The judges enjoyed evaluating the projects and are eager to provide additional help. The jury members were Pavel Curda (Contest founder, tech entrepreneur, angel investor), David Dostal (BlackLex), Mike West (Google Germany), Jakub Nesetril (apiary.io), Benjamin Krahmer (Unic Capital), Christof Wittig (Kii Capital), Ingo Drexler (Mountain Super Angel), Thomas Promny (Velvet Ventures), Alexander Husing (Deutsche Startups), Volker Heistermann (Yushan Ventures), Christoph Janz (Point Nine Capital).

"Social shopping has clear monetization potential, and hooking into various social graph providers is a good way of kick-starting a community around the things that users are considering purchasing," Mike West from Google Germany, a Jury member, commented on the winner SuittsMe, his favorite mashup.

"I am really happy about the huge amount of submitted projects. We got everything, from a perfect high-class realized mashup to a low-level not working one. A lot of the submitted projects are related to videos, this reflects the trend of the rising video content on the Internet," says David Dostal of BlackLex, Germany's ambassador of API Mashup Contests.

"I was surprised by the number and quality of the participating projects of the API mashup contest. Some very good projects among them have the potential to become extremely successful businesses," says Thomas Promny of Velvet Ventures.

"An awesome opportunity to see the virtually unlimited potential of the Internet architecture which allows for mashing up different platforms and services to useful and novel solutions in everyone's daily life," says Christof Wittig of Kii Capital.

"From my perspective, the API Mashup Contest represents a good opportunity to discover great ideas and talents at a very early stage. In return, coders and programmers get the chance to get valuable feedback, enhance their network and learn how to commercialize their ideas. It was a pleasure to learn about all these projects and ideas, whereas picking out the best ones wasn't easy to do," according to Ingo Drexler of Mountain Super Angel.

About the API Mashup Contests

The API Mashup Contest is a playground platform where business-minded developers should be getting help and having fun in the process. We organize 2-3 contests a year. Participation gives you a chance to test your fresh mashup projects in front of experienced business people who will provide guidance for the future of your project. Additionally, we help the participants acquire contacts to potential new team members. There are some prizes for the top projects from our partners. Top projects receive media coverage thanks to our media sponsor and partners. Interested in participating in future contests? Follow us on Twitter.

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Using an API - a simple way to provide access to your business assets when everyone in the value chain has a benefit - is a must for every major project on the Internet today. It's not only the giants like Google, Twitter and Facebook who use APIs to interact with their user base, but more and more businesses are creating their own APIs. And many smart players mash up APIs to create new fantastic projects with real commercial potential. The mission of the API Mashup Contests is to identify interesting API mashups and help them to develop during their early phase. We connect people who have good ideas with support from experienced business minded people. Our contests help API mashups to move in the right direction.

Why are APIs and API mashups attractive?

Programmers used to be the only people excited about APIs, but now a growing number of companies see them as a hot new product channel.

• APIs are a channel to new customers and markets: APIs used externally unlock the power of partners to use business assets to extend the reach of their products or services to customers and markets they may not easily reach.
• APIs can be private: Much of the talk about APIs emphasizes their public use. Internal APIs should be part of every company's IT strategy.
• APIs promote innovation: Through an API, people who are passionate about a problem can solve it in their own.
• APIs are a better way to organize IT: APIs used internally can accelerate innovation by allowing everyone in a company to use each other's assets without having to wait around for permission.
• APIs are not only for huge companies: The technology is standardized and able to be used by companies of all sizes.
• APIs create a path to many Apps: Apps are powered by APIs. When developers are motivated, they can use APIs and combinations of APIs to create new experiences for end users.
• APIs to create lots of apps that can lead to lots of customers: Apps will be a crucial channel in the next 10 years. There will be trillions of apps in the next decade vs. a billion web browsers at least.

This concise guide
(http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021223.do) describes the tremendous business potential of APIs, and demonstrates how you can use them to provide valuable services to clients, partners, or the public via the Internet.

Contact: Pavel Curda
skype: pavelcurda
Twitter: @APImashups
info@api-mashup.com
www.api-mashup.com