Facebook competition comes to SA

Johannesburg, 09 Nov 2007

South African Facebook application developers could be in line to win up to R40 000.

Internet application developer and promoter Mentez has opened a Facebook development competition to showcase and promote software creation on the social networking platform.

Juan Franco, MD of Mentez, says: "The contest will promote the exciting opportunities which are made possible on the Facebook platform due to the ability to integrate with user profiles and exploit the distribution infrastructure, which has millions of existing users and billions of connections."

According to the company, the contest is also being launched in other emerging countries such as Colombia, Mexico and Egypt, and has been accepting registrations from South Africa since 1 November this year.

Mentez will award the five most innovative Facebook applications from SA. The winner will receive a cash prize of R40 000, the runner-up a prize of R6 000, and the third, fourth and fifth will receive R3 000 each, says Franco.

"All the selected participants will sign an agreement with Mentez to improve their application, promote it within Facebook, protect their intellectual property, and find financial resources if necessary, and monetise the application. The company will provide the infrastructure required to host the applications with the best-in-class security, availability and performance standards."

Franco says Mentez has been in contact with SA`s universities, associations, and specialised groups to promote the competition

Get registered

Participants should first register with Mentez, says Franco. They will then have until the end of the registration period (22 December this year) to submit a description of the application they wish to develop, by answering the set questions on the Web site.

"The jury will select the application descriptions with the most potential. Those selected will progress to the development phase."

According to the company, the selected participants will begin the development phase from 31 January 2008.

The applications will be uploaded to Mentez servers to be integrated with Facebook for six weeks, explains Franco. "The five most successful applications, judged by a number of users per day, will be awarded the prizes."

He says the judges will be made up of a selection of people from international technology companies, including: Eben de Wit, a developer advisor of Microsoft SA; Enrique Perezyera, president of Salesforce.com for Latin America; Christian Kleinerman, group programme manager of SQL Server at Microsoft in the US; Matt Gharegozlou, MD for NetApp for Latin America and the Caribbean; and Manuel Restrepo, head of the IT Global Centre of Excellence as VP for AIG in London.

"The application has to comply with the technical specifications established by Mentez.com. There is no restriction on the type, use or format of the application participants develop," Franco concludes.