The Top 50 Apps in Asia – Results

The Top 50 Apps program started with the aim of discovering and shining the spotlight on popular web and mobile applications from Asia. When we closed polling on Aug 31, we had received over 100 nominations from 10 countries.

Voting took place from July 22 to Aug 31. Thousands of users and readers voted and commented on their favorite app.

See who made it to be Asia’s Top 50 Apps in the list below. While the Top 50 poll was a test of popularity, the next stage will demand more than that. In the next stage of the competition, the Top 10 apps will be selected based on merit by our internal panel of judges (announcing shortly). So what does it take to be Asia’s Top 10 Apps?

Catch the Top 10 Apps at Accelerate 2010, Asia’s largest innovation conference on Sept 22-23. Book by 31 Aug for more than 30% off tickets. Use promo code ‘E27EARLY’.

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Top 50 Apps poll closed

As of 12:00 am today, we have officially closed the Top 50 Apps poll. We have received thousands of votes for more than 100 nominees.

As we are tabulating the results, we invite e27 readers to take a guess on who you think will be in the Top 50?

mig33 chairman joins Loopt, joojoo-TechCrunch legal faceoff, Singapore Startups in China

Loopt hires Steve Boom as President: Popular location-based startup Loopt has hired Steve Boom to drive their growth and monetization strategies. Boom was the former CEO of Singapore-based mobile company, mig33. He will continue to serve as chairman of mig33 after he joins Loopt. He was also the senior vice-president at Yahoo where he was oversaw their mobile business. Boom has over a decade of experience in building global teams, product management, sales and business development in the mobile industry.

joojoo-TechCrunch lawsuit debacle: After months of silence on the joojoo-TechCrunch fiasco, the US district court has dismissed TechCrunch’s claims including the request for a preliminary injunction. The court however did not dismiss the breach of fiduciary duty claim. Nilay Patel, former attorney and Engadget editor writes, this ruling is a significant win and a significant loss to TechCrunch. This is because the court ruled that TechCrunch and Fusion Garage are business partners with legal obligations. In a statement released by Fusion Garage they said, “Fusion Garage believes it emerged overall in a strong position coming out of this legal round.” There has been no response from TechCrunch so far.

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SlideShare’s Amit Ranjan on making it outside the Valley

Amit Ranjan is a co-founder, and the chief operating officer of the popular content-sharing service, SlideShare, which gets 70 million pageviews a month. Many people also know him through his observations on the Indian tech scene on his blog, Webyantra.

We caught up with him recently to find out what has changed for him and SlideShare ahead of his talk in Singapore next month. Amit is based in India and SlideShare does most of its development work there. We asked him what it’s like running a successful Asian web company outside Silicon Valley’s charmed circle.

Hear Amit Ranjan live at Accelerate 2010, Asia’s largest innovation conference on Sept 22-23. Book by 31 Aug for more than 30% off tickets. Use promo code ‘E27EARLY’.

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Last two days to vote for your favorite App

The Top 50 Apps program aims to discover the best web and mobile applications in Asia. The contest has been running for a month and the response has been overwhelming. We’ve received thousands of votes from our readers and the respective App users.

The Top 10 Apps picked by our judges from the pool of Asia’s Top 50 Apps. The chosen App will win three months rent-free at Plug and Play Tech Centre in Silicon Valley and a chance to pitch at the largest innovation conference in Asia – Accelerate 2010.

The voting will end on 23:59, August 31st (SGT) and the results will be announced on Sep 1.

Hurry and don’t miss this chance to VOTE for your favorite app.

MIT’s Andrés Monroy-Hernandez on social computing

Andrés Monroy-Hernandez is a researcher doing his PhD at the MIT Media Lab. His focus is on social computing. He analyses and designs social software that supports collaboration. Andrés holds a MS in Media Technology from MIT and a BS in Electronic Systems Engineering from Tec de Monterrey in México.

Andrés is the founder of two social software applications online, Scratch and Sana. Scratch helps kids and novices learn programming while creating interactive media. On the other hand, Sana makes professional medical help available to developing countries where medical services are stretched thin.

e27 managed to grab a quick phone interview with him to hear more about his social entrepreneurship endeavors.

Hear Andrés Monroy-Hernandez live at Accelerate 2010, Asia’s largest innovation conference on Sept 22-23. Book by 31 Aug for more than 30% off tickets. Use promo code ‘E27EARLY’.

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Japan’s FlutterScape closes $177k seed round with Digital Garage

FlutterScape, the Tokyo-based social marketplace site, has closed a seed investment round worth 15 million yen (US$177,000) with JASDAQ-listed Digital Garage.

This is FlutterScape’s second investment this month. We broke the news earlier this month that it took US$100,000 from Japanese auctions aggregator Aucfan. The latest deal closed on 26 Aug.

Digital Garage is a pioneering Japanese web company. In the last few years it is most well-known as Twitter’s Japanese partner, recently signing Twitter co-founder Biz Stone to its advisory board.

Things have been moving quickly for FlutterScape, which exhibited at Echelon 2010 in June. Here’s our email interview with FlutterScape’s co-founder and chief executive Takehiro Kakiyama about the latest investment.
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Gaurav Oberoi on how to sell a startup

Gaurav Oberoi knows a thing or two about startups, and even more about making them successful, having started and sold BillMonk and Precision Polling in the US in the last four years.

BillMonk, which helped roommates split bills, was sold to Obopay and SurveyMonkey bought Precision Polling, which creates automated telephone polls. It wasn’t all a walk in the park, as Gaurav will explain when he discusses his experiences at Accelerate 2010.

We caught up with him before the event to get his thoughts on entrepreneurship and startup life.

Hear Gaurav Oberoi live at Accelerate 2010, Asia’s largest innovation conference on Sept 22-23. Book by 31 Aug for more than 30% off tickets. Use promo code ‘E27EARLY’.

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Koprol gets record 7,000 users from TV ad

Earlier this week Yahoo! debuted a television commercial to promote its Indonesian location-based social networking site Koprol. The commercial was aired for an Indonesian domestic audience.

As promised by Yahoo’s Indonesia country manager Pontus Sonnerstedt at a media event a few weeks ago, the ad features the Yahoo! ‘Purple Door’ which resembles, at least in function, the ‘Anywhere Door‘ from Japanese animation series Doraemon, which allowed the robot-cat protagonist and his companions the ability to traverse time and space. Doraemon is popular among television audiences in Southeast Asia.

The ad, which can be found on YouTube thanks to DailySocial, helped Koprol gain around 7,000 new sign-ups in a day. On 25 Aug Koprol announced that they gained even more users but did not provide a number.
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Win a stay at Silicon Valley’s Plug and Play Tech Centre

The Top 10 Apps picked by our judges from the pool of Asia’s Top 50 Apps will now win a new prize: Three months rent-free at Plug and Play Tech Centre in Silicon Valley.

Some of Plug and Play’s tenants at their Palo Alto Tech Centre include PayPal, Google, Logitech and even Singapore’s latest startup success story tenCube.

The three months at the tech centre just is part of the Plug and Play Accelerator program that the Top 10 Apps will win. Three months in the program usually costs US$6,500.

“The Plug and Play Accelerator program provides the opportunity for Asian startups to dive deep into the Silicon Valley ecosystem, essentially the high tech capital of the world,

“They will be able to engage with our VC and angel investor partners, talk to like minded technologists and other members of the high tech ecosystems and validate what they are doing,

“This will hopefully enable and accelerate their success,” said Jupe Tan, vice president of international relations at Plug and Play.

The full list of benefits is below.
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