China is the second largest luxury market in the world, and with more than two million millionaires today, it’s on its way to become the world’s largest luxury market by 2020. Well-known fashion brands are launching dedicated Chinese e-commerce platforms, as the trade volume of online shopping in China has grown by 100% per year since 2007. Brands are meeting the challenge to understand and adjust to the Chinese consumer’s online habits and standards when it comes to mobile commerce and social media interaction.

We spoke with Anina Net, China’s top foreign model and founder of 360Fashion Network about the hottest digital trends for fashion in China right now.

TNW: Tell us about the Mobile & Fashion exhibition created by the CHIC Fashion Expo and 360Fashion Network. What was the feedback from the attendees? Which mobile trends will be in and which out in 2012?

Anina: The Mobile & Fashion exhibition was the first time in the fashion industry that such a large scale exhibition has been built to educate fashion professionals. We chose 4 technologies that fashion brands can use today to showcase. One of the highlights was the 20-year anniversary of the CHIC Fashion Expo, the host of the event, with a timeline history of Chinese fashion and Chic that viewers could explore using augmented reality (AR). Through the 360AR app they could watch videos from 1993 with Valentino, Pierre Cardan, and Gianfranco Ferre, the western pioneers of Chinese fashion who influenced and kick started fashion in China with their cooperation at the CHIC.

Many of the reactions from top level CEO’s of fashion companies were that they had never seen AR technology and that they wanted to use it immediately for their advertising and billboard and magazine campaigns. They were really amazed at how it can extend their brand message.

Additionally, we learned a few mind-boggling statistics: In China of 2010, there were 30 million smartphones, 2011 saw 150 million, and in 2015 that number is expected to grow to 500 million smarphones. That’s a train you cannot stop and you better jump on!

TNW: What are the hottest fashion apps in China right now?

A: Right now in the fashion industry there are really not a lot of fashion brands with applications! It’s really at its beginning stage! We hope that our Anina Dress Up app for the iPhone will keep getting high downloads (we launched it at China fashion week), as well as our look book application. Right now, it’s more about social media apps like Sina Weibo, Youku, Tudou, Renren, and some fashion magazines such as Yoka. Of course, for mcommerce it’s all about mobile Taobao and the leader is Vancl, an online ecommerce fashion brand with mobile apps in every platform.

TNW: Any successful case studies from the world of fashion that do digital right in China?

A: All the luxury brands like Gucci, Dior and Burberry are surging ahead with social media…and of course, Burberry is in the lead!

TNW: Although QR codes is mainstream in Asia, there is a lot of discussion about whether they can be equally effective in Europe and the US. What do you think? Are QR codes here to stay or do you see another technology doing better?

A: Actually, QR codes are mainstream in Japan because the Dokomo operator has embeded the QR reader in all mobile phones, so there’s no download. It’s part of the core technology. QR codes are just starting here, and in Australia, so it was really cool to watch the young people attending CHIC Fashion Expo whip out their phones and start scanning codes! But the CEO’s still needed explanations when they saw examples such as MYPRO using it on their box covers, they immediately wanted it and I think after our fashion mobile exhibition we will see a major uptake in fashion!

TNW: China is becoming a global e-commerce powerhouse and many big fashion brands are investing in building sites custom-made for this market. What are the hottest ecommerce trends in China right now?

A: Yes, opening stores on TMALL, the “high end eBay” of Taobao is the first step that brands are making because of the high volume sales it can generate due to the millions in user traffic. However, they dont like the TMALL branding as it lowers their brand value to be next to the fakes on TAOBAO when you search. So that is why they are first using TMALL to establish sales, then they push to social media channels to capture the customers, and then they will open their own branded sites and push the traffic and sales there. This way they also cut out the middle man and have more profits as TMALL and other ecommerce portals commission can be high!

TNW: Although fashion and tech companies invest a lot of money to gain a spot in the Chinese market it is rarer that we see an upcoming fashion brand or tech startup reach equal success in the West. Why do you think it is so?

A: Yes, there are many failed cases due to the same problem: culture, understanding of market, and the different user shopping habits. I think that the first successful case you will see will be JNBY. I love this brand.

TNW: What’s next for 360Fashion? Anything you could let us know?

A: We are planning a big fashion show at the largest Mobile Conference in all Asia so stay tuned. We did it first on the fashion side, now we will make history on the technology side! We are moving forward with our Fashion apps in China such as our fashion look book app pre-installed on millions of Chinese handsets (you can get a taste here). We are also working to release a Windows Phone to the Chinese market!

Advising brands to get active on social media is, in the words of Black Eyed Peas, “so 2000 and late.” Every brand smaller or bigger has at least a Facebook page, if not also at least one Twitter handle, a Tumblr, a Google+, an Instagram and Pinterest account, etc. Most marketers include social media as part of their overall strategy, 97% agree that it provides benefits and value to their business.

Figuring out what to share, where and when can be overwhelming though, especially for small businesses that don’t have a big budget for a team to support all these accounts or fancy tools to monitor them, retaining their audience and providing the right content to lure in new costumers remains a puzzle.

As social media accounts and conversations are on the rise, how can brands stand out from their competition? The fight for attention is hard, as the competition for it is not only other brands but also individual bloggers and others that keep pushing out fresh content on the same subjects.

Getting your customers to engage with you online is vital on all social media networks and even more on Facebook, where the your fans’ interactions with your brand affect directly your visibility in their feeds through Facebook’s Edgerank. So what should you have in mind in order to drive up engagement on Facebook?

1. You need your customers to LOVE you, not just ‘Like’ you.

Getting your number of likes, shares and comments up is easy, all you have to do is post a funny pic of a puppy or post: “Like if you love Ryan Gosling”, but that won’t do much for your brand, will it? Well at least not as much as it will for Ryan Gosling’s personal brand.

Just as you’d fix your hair and a touch of make up to make yourself more photographable, in the same way try to make the content related to your brand more shareable. If you fall in the trap of posting just what you assume will get you a Like, even if it’s not relatable to your brand’s ID you’ll be the equivalent of an insecure teenager that projects a fake personality to get a date, lose sight of your brand’s goals and time that won’t translate into sales.

2. Human nature crave variety, and so does Edgerank.

One of the factors that determines your Edgerank score is “weight”, which measures the type of content you post – different types get different weights so keep your content diverse. Apart from that, it is no secret that pics do much better in terms of shares and likes than posts with just text, but don’t limit yourself to that.

Try out different ways to share information, such as video, and get feedback from your customers like with Questions. Use apps to set up giveaways and reward your most loyal friends. There is no golden rule and just as each brand is unique, so should its page. Monitor via Insights what kind of posts get you the most interactions and focus on that kind of content while still spicing things up every now and then with other media. In any case keep it fresh!

3. Don’t be a snob, reply to comments!

It’s amazing how many brands still don’t do this, and you will see that a kind reply goes a long way with your customers. You are there to connect with your customers after all – would you ever ignore a client who walked in your store, or hang up on them if they called your office?

In a recent research 49,5% answered that if their questions on Facebook or Twitter went unanswered, they would no longer do business with the company  Answering comments will also encourage your fans to keep posting comments, as they will feel their opinion is heard and valued. You don’t have to reply in detail publicly, simply acknowledging their question and directing them to contact the right person via email or telephone can be enough.

4. Take responsibility and acknowledge your mistakes

A Facebook attack is not exactly the kind of engagement that brands are after, but it has happened to the best of them. Keep a sense of humor and your apology short and honest so you can be move as soon as possible back to normal.

In any case, don’t delete negative comments, you will see that if you’ve been engaging with your fans they’ll be the first to jump in and defend you, saving the day and your page.

5. Monitor analytics

This will help you get to know who is your audience, where you need to grow more, what kind of content works best for you, but also what is the right timing. Try to figure out how many posts a day get you the best interaction rates. Usually brands are more effective with a small number of posts per day, like 2 or 5, while media brands are more effective with around 10 posts a day.

One suit does not fit all, so check your numbers and try different things out until you find what’s best for your brand. Another thing to keep in mind is how often you post on your page and during what times. If you are a local brand, focus on your timezone, but if you aim to reach a broader audience you may want to spread your content to reach more timezones.

Bonus tip: When we say engage with your fans, we certainly don’t mean engage in a fight! Don’t feed the trolls; a short and firm reply should be enough.

What have you tried and worked when it comes to engagement on Facebook? What are your Do and Don’ts?

At LeWeb we had the pleasure to meet Michael Lazerow, CEO and founder of Buddy Media, a social enterprise software company with an impressive list of clients, featuring some of the world’s largest brands. Michael talked to us about Buddy Media’s next steps, Google+, the rising forces of Tumblr and Instagram, social commerce and what he sees as the hottest trends in social media for 2012.

TNW: Michael can you tell us a bit about how Buddy Media came to the success it has now and what are your next goals?

Michael Lazerow: We started off in the United States and in two years to we went from 40 to now almost 250 people. We have offices in New York which is our primary office and then we have 50 people all over the world. We have a West Coast office in San Francisco which is growing fast, an office in Europe and we also opened one for Asia, in Singapore.

We’ve seen our client base go from 0 to over 600 clients and agencies who license the platform, we went from working with just Facebook, to Twitter and LinkedIn and Google+ we were the only company who was a charter preferred developer partner for all four of those platforms. We also broke out off the social nets with our Reach Buddy product that enables our customers to bring their socially connected content from Facebook or Twitter for instance to their own assets.

We’ve focused on how to combine great content and technology to distribute it. So far there has been a confusion with social media the customers wanted to have a presence to get in the game but didn’t really have clear goals, now we start with really good ideas and unleash them across multiple channels that are socially connected so as people engage they are challenging and inviting friends to share experiences online.

Our goal is to keep creating better product  products that let brands do three primary things:

1. Engage: their customers, consumers, their social graph

2. Listen: not only push out content and grow their number of friends or followers, but also gather quantitative data about what’s happening with these platforms and using this data to make better decisions. Benchmarking is key.

3 Deploy globally: we have some clients that have over 1000 people that at any given day will log in our technology to manage a Facebook page in their country, or monitor what’s going on, or look at analytics, so rights provisioning, like who has the right to do what  is very important as well as managing workflow and data auditing. We are really built for enterprise so that is why we have clients 8 out of top 10 global marketers, the largest brands in the world like the NFL, David Beckham and the US Airforce

TNW: So where will you be focusing on the next three months?

Michael Lazerow: There are three things we look at: what we will do in product, in sales and distribution support and the company Buddy Media as a whole.

From a product standpoint we recently announced a deal with comScore through which we can now provide deeper analytics, show brands where and what their Facebook fans buy, what are their favorite tv shows, etc. This partnerships enables us to provide powerful analytics by combining real world panelist data with a brand’s Facebook fans. So analytics will be in our focus probably not just for the next three months but for the next three years, we will continue to build there new platforms. We are just beginning because people are just realizing that Facebook is great, but there is so much more than that.

Data and how you engage your customers is pretty much all we’re focused on a for the next three months but we will still be working on all the three things I mentioned. We are not a company that goes silent for three months and then comes out with a totally different, better product, we built this company like Facebook, pushing things live every week. We build, listen to clients, optimize and continue to build over time.

TNW: What do you think of Tumblr’s and the debate around whether it provides enough analytics for brands?

Michael Lazerow: Inside the technology and social media field we are very focused on the where and the what, like what is the platform you are building something on and with what technologies but I think for publishers and brands it is the content that matters the most and taking it where there is an audience. I think what Tumblr did early on, frankly better than Twitter, was they solved the creative crisis of how you program content.

Twitter is great but it’s only 140 characters. If you are a fashion brand, a publisher, a real estate company or any company that has images and video and sound to share you wanna be able to program content. So far Facebook was the only place you could do that with Facebook tabs and the wall, on Tumblr you can do it and you can have a chronological order of all your content.

The other platform that has emerged as a strong player in sharing content is Instagram, I think Tumblr and Instagram — although Tumblr is much bigger right now than Instagram — are very exciting to a lot of our brands and they are places to program content, without investing a lot of money. A brand can easily add and connect Tumblr to its social media management system, start publishing content and figuring out what content works better and grow a following there. Instagram’s feed in comparison to Tumblr’s is limited to photos, Tumblr offers a variety of media and that’s why the world’s youth really revolves around it now, Tumblr is the second most popular net behind Facebook for them.

I don’t look at Tumblr just as Tumblr but as a two way communication vehicle, as part of a system that integrates all of your social media activity and helps you tell stories at scale. That’s what our job is, to make this easy to do this anywhere so you don’t have to say oh I have to invest 1 million dollars to do Tumblr, another for Instagram, to make all these part of your socially distributed network.

TNW: What’s your take on Google+? Is it worth the investment?

Michael Lazerow: There two things that make Google+ really interesting to me: one is it’s growing faster than a lot of the other social nets did at the beginning, so you have to pay attention, and the second  it’s Google, so they’re in it for the long haul, they’re not going away. They happen to own search, mobile, a big chunk of it with Android, browsers, video with YouTube and so to me it’s how this social layer of G+ interact with, affect, integrate with all these.

How it affects search I think is the most important. What your customers +1 is going to start affecting what they see in their search results and let’s not forget that YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google.com. It will be interesting to see, how does it tie in with your mobile strategy not only on Android but on HTML5 and iOS.

I think brands need to invest now because when you are early with these platforms you get a lot of the learning out of the way and and you build capabilities that it takes others years to do. There is a reason Coke, Starbucks and NY Times have very successful Facebook strategies, they were there when Facebook was 20 million people, that’s when I started this business. So now that Facebook has gone up to 850 million people they are at a huge advantage because they have infrastructure and content systems in place to market there and you wanna get there with new social media platforms like Tumblr and Google+

TNW: Social commerce and f-commerce have been two huge buzzwords in 2011? Will they still be in 2012?

Michael Lazerow: F-commerce doesn’t really work right now. Every attempt to build a fully sustainable store on FB has either led to publicly saying it’s just testing or they’ve said nothing and haven’t released anything. If there were good numbers, and I know a lot of the numbers, cause we’ve done it like a hundred times, they would.

People are on Facebook to socialize and so putting a store there just to have a store on Facebook isn’t social commerce, is having a store on Facebook and just that. Where I think Facebook is taking it now is enabling brands to socialize e-commerce sites.

Brands should hook up their e-commerce site to Facebook in a more meaningful way through wish lists or gift guides, enabling the customer to invite friends to check out their registry on their Facebook profile or giving the option try on an outfit with a kiosk in store where you can take a picture and upload it to Facebookto get real time feedback from friends. The consumer now can go shopping with 200 friends instead of just one friend. I think social will be a huge part of the commerce this year but I’m a little skeptical about whether the focus of commerce should be on Facebook versus mobile and the web.

TNW: So what’s for social media in 2012?

Michael Lazerow: It’s the year of Tumblr! We are all talking about it, they are growing like crazy, it works. There is a reason NikeiD runs their blog through Tumblr, that’s where people are! It’s huge!

Here is my feeling, not Buddy Media’s view, but my controversial personal view: in order to have a successful social network you need two groups, celebrities and women There’s never been a social network that has taken off and didn’t have celebrities and women. That is one thing that’s holding back Google+ it’s primarily men right now, but it’s still very early and it is a work in progress.

When you look at the Nielsen social media report and what’s the largest concentration of young women and celebrities right now, it’s on Tumblr. Barack Obama started his campaign Tumblr you have the Lady Gaga and so many more. Celebrities are all over Tumblr like they were on Twitter, that’s what grew it. I think you wanna invest ahead of that curve, it’s happening when a celebrity says you can follow me there, when a date says connect with me here instead of Facebook, that’s how these movements get started.

Having lived through Facebook and before that AOL, Netscape and Yahoo, I’ve been in this business since 1994, I feel the same excitement and momentum in Tumblr and Instagram. Tumblr is much bigger and I think is more meaningful right now. Get in front of it. Who cares if they don’t have analytics? They have 50 people controlling a huge chunk slab of the internet!

We are a little too focused on ROI. The ROI is built in the distribution of content. If you distribute content where people see your messaging the ROI is there. You’re communicating that’s why the world goes around and I don’t really think you can look at Tumblr and say I shouldn’t be connecting and putting content out there.

London-based King.com has launched just three of its games on Facebook so far, and yet it’s already the fourth-largest game developer on the social network worldwide.

The titles King.com has made available on Facebook now represent about two-thirds of the 1 billion plays that King records each month. Total monthly gameplays are up five-fold in the past year, attracting now more than 25m monthly unique users and the number of King.com games played per month has gone up from 500 million to 1.2 billion.

We met with Riccardo Zacconi, the chief executive and founder of King.com,who spoke at the Game On! Panel at LeWeb 2011, to talk about the trends for gaming in 2012, what’s next for King.com and the future of casual social games.

2011 marked a turning point for King.com, with your move to Facebook bringing you incredible results in only a few months. Can you tell us more about how all this happened?

Riccardo Zacconi: “We started the company in 2003, so we are one of “the oldies”, and we’ve developed over the course of 8 years about 160 casual games, all of which were games you could play with other people, not just by yourself. We distributed these games through online partners.

In 2008 Facebook started taking off and we saw that more and more traffic was going from classic partners to Facebook, but we still didn’t launch anything there. We were a bit late to Facebook, we only started trying different things in 2010. We launched our first game last April, an existing title from Kings.com, which we put in what we call a social envelope, a story mode where you can play not only the 3 minutes game, but you can also play with a story line and many levels, so it lasts much longer.

We launched the second game in June, the third game in October and within 8 months we’ve become the fourth biggest game developer on Facebook with 5.8 million daily players. Our latest game became within two months the largest casual game on Facebook with 3.3 million players per day. Bejeweled, a classic game title, became the second largest casual game on Facebook with 2.7 million daily players.”

What’s next for King.com? What are your priorities for the first months of 2012?

Riccardo Zacconi: “For 2012 our number one goal is to continue to launch new games on Facebook. Every game has to have super high quality. The first focus is that – continue to build on the reach of Facebook and Google+.

We plan to bring the rest of our 160 titles on Facebook’s platform. This is the easy part as thanks to this platform we’ve developed and which we use for every new game, making the transition very efficient. For instance, for the latest game we launched on Facebook we only had to change 1% of the code on the platform.

The second one is to do the same thing we have done on Facebook on mobile, and these are our two key strategic priorities for 2012. I think casual games are perfect to bring on mobile, as they don’t really need to change. Now, we are in the process of developing mobile games, we’ve launched our first test game and we’ll be launching our first saga game in January, which is basically the same game you have on Facebook, and then more games will follow.

We opened up three new development offices, next to our main development office which is in Stockholm, one in Romania with main focus on mobile, one in Poland with focus on social and a third office in Malmo so we can have access to the talent pool of Denmark.”

What about Google+ as a gaming platform? Is it too soon to say if it’s worth the investment or not?

Riccardo Zacconi: “We just launched on Google+. My feeling is that Google+ is a long-term play, it would be hasty to say it’s off because they had more traction initially. I think that for Google it’s a strategic move, they will put Google+ in the center of search and in the center of their android efforts. For smaller players it makes sense to focus your resources, meaning focusing on Facebook alone but if you are a bigger player you need to make your strategic investments and pay attention to more platforms.”

Do you think Zynga’s IPO, and the increasing popularity of social gaming has attracted more interest from VCs? How has it affected game developers?

Riccardo Zacconi: “There is a lot of interest in the VC community for games but at the same time it’s much more difficult to get money in comparison to two or three years ago. Then, the quality didn’t really matter as long as you offered a game on Facebook. Since Facebook was growing so fast you were growing with Facebook. Now it’s more complex, in order to compete you must have:

1. Quality. The quality of each game must be much higher these days as the competition stiffens.

2. A rich portfolio. You need to have more than one or two games, a rich portfolio helps retain the user long-term.

3. Marketing muscle and a very good marketing team, so you can build up a user base.”

Has Facebook made your work ‘easier’?

Riccardo Zacconi: “Definitely. In the past we had to also build a community from along with the game, where you could see your friends and set up a profile. Now you can focus on building the game and just integrate all the community functionality from Facebook, which is much more efficient.”

What do you ‘read’ in your demographics? What countries are in your focus?

Riccardo Zacconi: “From the demographics point of view, our target group are casual players which means females over 25. If you look at who is playing the Zynga games, like Farmville, it’s also the same group of users. There is also a second set of users who are playing games like Zynga Poker and Mafia Wars, those are younger males, but this is not our target group. In terms of countries, we focus on the US and Europe. We don’t focus yet on Japan or China and we plan to work on that for the second half of the year.”

What do you think will be the big trends for gaming in 2012?

Riccardo Zacconi: Casual social gaming is going to be big in 2012 because mobile is a reality that is growing very fast, and social platforms like Facebook are a reality that is already there. Facebook’s penetration especially is super high. Additionally the recent changes in Facebook’s app makes playing games through Facebook’s mobile app look really good.

The fact that almost everyone has installed the Facebook app on their phone means that if you have a game on Facebook, it’s super easy for anyone with a Facebook account to access and playing in on mobile even if you haven’t built a mobile app for the game yet. In other words, if you have a large user base on Facebook, this enables to also build a strong user base on mobile I believe. We now have the largest casual game on Facebook and so if we develop the same casual game also for mobile and it’s free, I think it’s gonna be interesting. Also tablets will factor in the success for social gaming in 2012. Tablets will substitute, I believe, home use of computers, it’s much nicer to sit on your couch with a tablet and enjoy a game.”

Do you believe that Kindle will be a strong player?

Riccardo Zacconi: “I just received my Kindle Fire before I came to LeWeb, from the US. I’ve held it in my hands but haven’t really used it yet. From a physical  point of you though just by interacting with the hardware, you know you need to love your gadgets, I love it! it’s only so small but it feels right, it feels good.

I think it’s great for consumption of content. Actually I like it so much that for the King.com Christmas party I’ve bought a Kindle Fire for everyone in the company. I believe that this is the device that will open up the tablet market, unless iPad becomes cheaper. It’s a price point. For a large portion of users to pay 400 or 600 dollars is too expensive, whereas Amazon’s Kindle Fire is very affordable.”

What do you thing will be big for the gaming world in 2012 apart from the social media effect?

Riccardo Zacconi: “Casual is a genre of games that you can put accross everywhere, so this is one thing, next thing I think are specific genres for which there is a high demand, especially high quality game titles for a male audience that likes to play, for example on a console.

They are used to playing games with a much higher quality, but the quality that is offered now on mobile and social platforms is not enough for them. Games of chance is also an area that we’ve seen some companies developing games which are getting traction because of the instant monetization, but it’s a niche group, but in terms of reach I think definitely casual games on all devices I think will be an interesting trend to see.”

How do you manage to stay focused in the age of distraction? Share in the comments bellow.

Technology and luxury: two industries that move at a fast pace, demanding constant innovation and high quality products. Luxury was slow in embracing the digital world, but has come a long way in a sort time, allocating increasingly more resources in discovering new ways to integrate technology in all its facets.

Today we see marketing campaigns using augmented reality, holographic fashion shows, tech related products like branded mobiles, and social media as key channel of communication with customers by many luxury brands. Luxury Interactive conference by WBR which took place last month in London focused on such existing successful case studies and sparked conversation around the future of luxury online. Much like last year the use of social media was a hot topic.

One of the presentations that stood out was the one by Tamar Koifman, senior social media strategist for Digital Luxury Group, a Geneva-based agency focused on luxury brands. Her presentation was on branded content strategy, a topic on the agenda of every brand, luxury or not, as brands have to fight to stand out from the “noise” and gain their customer’s attention. Consumers on the other hand have high expectations when it comes to branded entertainment.

Tamar Koifman, who regularly shares her viewpoints on the fusion of digital marketing and fashion as a co-curator of Fashion’s Collective, told us: “As a strategist in the field of digital marketing and social media for luxury, fashion, and beauty brands, I am often asked for my insights on what brands should be doing on platforms like Facebook and Twitter to get their fan base buzzing, interacting, and eventually shopping. One of my first recommendations is to build a solid communication plan, both for outbound and inbound messages. In fact, many brands often find it difficult to determine what they should be sharing via social media. I am a believer that creating engaging content does not need to be difficult, time-consuming, or expensive. There are a number of easy wins for brands.”

You can see Tamar’s presentation slides below, outlining 9 tactics for content creation that require minimal effort, but that can have big impact on fan engagement:

Lets take a look back, for those who missed it and those who already miss it:

Hackathon: Right before kicking off The Next Web Conference 2011, TNW hosted a hackathon, bringing the worlds leading platforms (API’s and SDK’s) together with an international group of Web and Mobile developers challenging them to build the most creative apps they can come up with in less than 48 hours. Developers and API partners were interviewed by Jon Jacob from BBC Radio 5 Live. You can watch more backstage material from TNW2011 Hackathon here.

The first place award, which came with over $3,500 of Amazon Web Services credits, went to EmailtoX created by Emanuel Lainas from Romania and Thomas Schaaf from Germany, who describe it as Gravatar 2.0. You can watch their presentation on TNW YouTube channel.

StartUp Rally: The StartUp Rally was a tough competition. The presentations took place during day two (block one and two) & three (block three and four) of the conference, the 16 startups presenting were:

• Wosju , watch our interview with the company’s CEO and co-founder, Hans Henrik H. Heming here.
• Hitchie, interview with the founders Carlo and Fabian Markaban, here.
• Silk app, watch our interview with Silk, here.
• OneDrum, watch our interview with OneDrum’s CEO, Jasper Westaway here.
• Marvia.ads, watch our interview with the founder here.
• Openmargin, interview with the Netherlands based startup here.
• Flockler, Watch our interview with Finnish Flockler Founder Toni Hopponen here.
• Cleeng, watch Cleeng’s co-founder Gilles Domartini interview, here.
• Foodzy, watch our interview with Foodzy’s founder here.
• Squeeqly, interview with the founders can be found here.
• Qubulus, watch our interview with Qubulus here.
• Onavo, watch our video interview with CEO, Guy Rosen here.
• Zmazz
• Kuvva
• Bossa Studios, watch our interview with the founders in Amsterdam here.

Among them the ones that stood out by the end were: TNW Startup Rally overall winner: Silk, best B2C startup: Kuvva, best Mobile startup: Onavo, best B2B startup: Cleeng, most remarkable pitch: Foodzy, most promising business model: Marvia,overall public’s choice winner: Onavo.

TNW2011 Day 1:

We kicked off TNW conference with music and I’m not referring just to the 22tracks TNW Playlist, but also to the first two keynote speakers that took the stage, Alexander Ljung the CEO of SoundCloud and Jonathan Forster, General Manager for Spotify Europe. Next on stage, Onno Bakker, co-founder of eBuddy gave us a guided tour to the history and future of messaging, to pass on the mic to Olivier Fécherolle, Chief Development and Communication Officer of Viadeo.

Next up talking about a word every marketeer seems to love these days, gaming, was Stephanie Kaizer from the leading European social games developer Wooga. The flow of our agenda then took us to a very different and promising land, where the use of new technology in improving drastically the quality of life,  the land of Africa. Rudy de Waele co-founder of Dotopen presented Mobile Trends for Africa 2020.

Back to a more familiar topic, Mario Sundar, LinkedIn‘s social media guy, reminded us about why “Social media is like peanut butter, makes everything taste better” and talked about how a social media company like LinkedIn does social. Closing the first day of TNW2011, Alex Hoye, CEO of Latitude Digital and Co-founder of GoIndustry on new venture economics, where “winners are underdog entrepreneurs and early stage investors”. Perfect way to celebrate the reunion with old friends and meet new: drinks at Hotel V!

TNW2011Day 2:

Waking up TNW style: combining a cup of coffee with some numbers and stats, presented by trendprofessional Marja Ruigrok from the TNW research on Dutch people’s online behavior. Prominent Public Relations exec and blogger Steve Rubel talked about “The laws of attention”, then handed his place on stage to someone that definitely knows how to get attention, Tapulous Co-founder and software engineer Mike Lee, who talked about “The Future Of Technology”, dressed as a pirate!

After a brief presentation of Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition, for which we’ve listed 5 reasons you should enter if you are a mobile app developer, Eboman took the main stage to impress us with his realtime video sampling system. Next on stage Dave Winer introducing us to Blorking, while on In depth stage Amazon CTO Werner Vogels shared the lessons he got from building Amazon.com. Maybe the most touching moment of TNW2011 was Mark Randall‘s keynote, as he shared with us his personal story about how losing 650 million taught him the secret to happiness and success. In the same spirit was also Tammy Camp‘s keynote that followed, prompting us to work on our dreams and not our fantasies: Fantasies are selfish, dreams have purpose! After wrapping up day 2, TNW geeks flooded Wolvenstraat for food and of course beer!

TNW2011 Day 3:

Kicking off TNW2011 with a hot panel on a hot topic: Alexander Bard, Andrew Keen and Rick Falkvinge discussed privacy “Privacy is for losers – open is the new closed” and so much more, like why Alexander Bard hates Facebook and why evil can be good.

Robert Scoble then talked about some of his favorite apps that represent  The Next Web, which for him is the sum of “Human” plus “Reality” plus “Virtual”, you can also watch a backstage interview with him here. While over on the In-depth stage, presentations and discussion were focused on more practical issues like SEO, Monitoring and Social CRM and tips on building high-performance websites. On the main stage we had a surprise guest, Nicklas Zenstrøm, founder of Skype. You can watch his interview with Boris over Skype of course, here – particularly fascinating as Skype has now been acquired by Microsoft.

Next we had the incomperable Howard Lindzon, founder of Stocktwits, hedge fund manager, investor and TechStars mentor. Lindzon leapt into sharing his life lessons as an entrepreneur and gave advice like “Punch a banker, hug a developer”. Parallel to the Leancamp session on the In depth stage, on the main stage hacker Pablos Holman, invited us to think like hackers in order to innovate and discover new ways to apply technology to every facet of life. While voting for TNW StartUp Rally big winner, the iPad DJ, Rana Sobhany talked about how she started working with iPad as a DJ and played some music for us, although Patrick singing karaoke on stage was a tough act to follow!

A happy end for all:

DON’T MISS: Wilg’s sketchnotes for TNW2011, the super fun photos by Lize Korpershoek, some amazing 360 views of TNW2011 here, here and here as well as Patrick shaving the head of HTC’s lucky (?) winner on stage!

If you want to share your TNW2011 memories, like our friend Erik Visser, use hashtag #TNW2011. Check out our backchannel for more backstage material ;)

See you in Amsterdam, April 2012!

The conversation around entrepreneurship in the digital world and social media has escaped the walls of Silicon Valley and the community of entrepreneurs has gotten closer than ever. Entrepreneurs support and share their experience with each other and they get inspiration from success stories across the globe. But when interested in making a change with their businesses, who do they turn to for inspiration and guidance? We decided to take a closer look.

We partnered with PeerIndex, to come up with a list featuring the 25 most influential people tweeting about entrepreneurship. Our top 25 list is not ranked based on their overall PeerIndex score, but based on each one’s topic resonance score, which measures their actions within the entrepreneur community.

You can follow our list of the entrepreneur community’s top 25 influentials on Twitter here or get more info on the PeerIndex group we’ve created to stay on top of the latest news, get inspired or get valuable advice. And, let us know your suggestions for people to follow if you are interested in entrepreneurship in the comments!

1. Steve Blank

PeerIndex: 68

Advises start-up companies and teaches at Stanford, University of California, Berkeley and Columbia. Famous for defining startups as: “a temporary organization in search of a repeatable business model.” Find out more about his work and books here.

Follow @sgblank

2. Brad Feld

PeerIndex: 76

Managing Director at Foundry Group, Mobius Venture Capital, Intensity Ventures, member of Board of Directors at Gold Systems, Co-Founder of TechStars (see our recent story) and Chairman at National Center for Women and IT.

Follow @bfeld

3. Eric Ries

PeerIndex: 71

Author of the book The Lean Startup, sharing his experience online on StartUp Lessons Learned.

Follow @ericries

4. Bijan Sabet

PeerIndex: 69

General Partner at Spark Capital, Twitter investor and board member.

Follow @bijan

5. Umair Haque

PeerIndex: 85

Director of the Havas Media Lab, author of The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business and founder of Bubblegeneration. You can read his posts on Harvard Business Review.

Follow @umairh

6. Mark Suster

PeerIndex: 74

Entrepreneur that sold both his companies, BuildOnline to publicly traded French company and Koral to Salesforce.com and now is a partner at venture capital firm GRP Partners. Read more about him on Both Sides Of The Table.

Follow @msuster

7. Dave McClure

PeerIndex: 76

Founding partner at 500 Startups, co-founder/organizer at StartupVisa.com, founder/creator at GeeksOnaPlane, organizer & founder at Startup2Startup, advisor, investor & boardmember at myGengo, Twilio, Inc. and TeachStreet.com, advisor at Kiva.org, startup advisor and angel investor at 500 Hats LLC (Sole Proprietorship)

Follow @davemcclure

8. Rand Fishkin

PeerIndex: 70

CEO and founder at SEOmoz.org, and a published author. You can read his personal blog here.

Follow @randfish

9. Rob Go

PeerIndex: 63

Co-founder and partner at NextView Ventures, founding Advisor at Stealth Education Company. You can read his personal blog here.

Follow @robgo

10. Martin Varsavsky

PeerIndex: 73

Based in Madrid, Varsavsky is a tech entrepreneur and investor, founder of Viatel, Ya.com, Jazztel, and Fon.

Follow @martinvars

11. Ben Yoskovitz

PeerIndex: 61

Founding partner at Year One Labs and founder, publisher at NextMontreal. He shares his thoughts on Instigator Blog.

Follow @byosko

12. Tim Berry

PeerIndex: 63

President and founder of Palo Alto Software. Founder of bplans.com. He writes about entrepreneurship in his blogs Planning Startups Stories and Up and Running.

Follow @Timberry

13. Roger Ehrenberg

PeerIndex: 67

Founder and managing partner of IA Ventures. Roger currently sits on the boards of BankSimple, Kinetic Global Markets, Metamarkets, Recorded Future, and The Trade Desk, and is a Board observer of SavingStar. He blogs at Information Arbitrage.

Follow @infoarbitrage

14. Vivek Wadhwa

PeerIndex: 58

Visiting Scholar, UC-Berkeley, Emory, Dir. of Research, CERC, Duke University, Sr. Research Assoc Harvard Law School, BusinessWeek, TechCrunch columnist. Read more about Wadhwa and his work here.

Follow @wadhwa

15. Bryce Roberts

PeerIndex: 60

Co-founder and managing director at O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV). At OATV he focuses on consumer and enterprise software and services investments.

Follow @bryce

16. Hiten Shah

PeerIndex: 67

CEO and co-founder of KISSmetrics. Shah is starting a free newsletter just for entrepreneurs, you can sign up for Hitenism here.

Follow @hnshah

17. Jason Calacanis

PeerIndex: 71

Founder at LAUNCH Media, co-founder at ThisWeekIn

Follow @Jason

18. David Cancel

PeerIndex: 59

CEO and founder at Performable. Previously started Ghostery, Lookery and Compete. You can read his blog here.

Follow @dcancel

19. Gary Vaynerchuk

PeerIndex: 90

Runs the consulting agency Vaynermedia and Internet’s leading discount wine retailer Wine Library. He is the author of the book The Thank You Economy.

Follow @garyvee

20. Mark Bao

The youngest one in our list, Bao is president and CEO at Avecora, co-founder at Supportbreeze and EveryoneGive, CEO at Adaptance Advertising and Classleaf, founder and director at Genevine Foundation and The Center for Ethical Business, founder at Genevine and CTO, co-founder at TickrTalk. See our epic interview with Bao here.

Follow @markbao

21. Neil Patel

PeerIndex: 68

Co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics. You can read his posts on entrepreneurship on Quick Sprout.

Follow @neilpatel

22. Sarah Lacy

PeerIndex: 68

Senior editor at TechCrunch.com, author of the book Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos. You can read her personal blog here.

Follow @sarahcuda

23. David Skok

PeerIndex: 58

General Partner at Matrix Partners, board member and investor at Enservio, board member at HubSpot, Digium, Inc and SolidWorks Corp. You can read his blog here.

Follow @BostonVC

24. Chris Dixon

PeerIndex: 74

Co-founder of Hunch and Founder Collective. Personal investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype, Foursquare, Kickstarter, Stack Overflow and more. Read his blog on cdixon.org.

Follow @cdixon

25. hussein kanji

PeerIndex: 58

Early stage technology investor, advisor to Chairman at Eros International Plc, board director at Nivio Technologies, advisor at Byhiras LLP and board member at International Alumni Council at London Business School.

Follow @hkanji

Don’t forget you can follow how the Top 25 changes over time via our PeerIndex group, you can also take a look at our previous Top 25 lists on Augmented Reality, Cloud Computing and Apple.

Apple can take pride in having the most hardcore fans in the tech world. In fact, according to today’s General Sentiment report Apple topped the list for the fourth quarter, expanding its lead over rivals Google and Microsoft. Apple geeks are more passionate than the Twilight moms and Harry Potter fans put together, but who do they pay attention to on Twitter?

We partnered with PeerIndex, to come up with a list featuring the 25 most influential people tweeting about Apple. Our top 25 list is not ranked based on their overall PeerIndex score , but based on each one’s topic resonance score, which measures how their actions within the Apple community.

You can follow our list of Apple’s top 25 influentials on Twitter or get more info on the PeerIndex group we’ve created to stay on top of the latest Apple news, and of course share your favorite twitterings on all things Apple in the comments below.

1. John Gruber

PeerIndex: 79

John Gruber writes and publishes the popular blog Daring Fireball and is also the creator of the formatting markup language Markdown.

Follow @gruber

2. MG Siegler

PeerIndex: 76

Another blogger on number two, MG Siegler writes for Techcrunch, but you can also read his posts on his personal blog parislemon.

Follow @parislemon

3. Lance Ulanoff

PeerIndex: 76

Editor-in-Chief of PCMag.com. In his capacity as Senior Vice President, Content, for Ziff Davis, Inc., Lance oversees content strategy for all of Ziff Davis’ Web sites.

Follow @LanceUlanoff

4. Michael Gartenberg

PeerIndex: 71

Industry analyst at Gartner, technology columnist and speaker. Read his blog here.

Follow @gartenberg

5. John Paczkowski

PeerIndex: 69

Deputy Managing Editor at All Things Digital. From 1999 to 2007, he was the author of Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s daily newspaper.

Follow @johnpaczkowski

6. Louis Gray

PeerIndex: 71

Vice President of Marketing at My6sense, Gray is also an advisor for Qwotebook, Paladin Advisors Group, Teens in Tech and SocialToo.com. He is author and publisher at louisgray.com

Follow @louisgray

7. Federico Viticci

PeerIndex: 48

Based in Italy, Viticci is the editor of the popular blog MacStories.net.

Follow @viticci

8. Jason Snell

PeerIndex: 65

Editorial director at Mac Publishing, publishers of Macworld magazine and numerous tech-related web sites. He also writes about TV on TeeVee.net, about college football at Excuse Me for My Voice and for online fiction magazine InterText.

Follow @jsnell

9. Andy Ihnatko

PeerIndex: 64

Andy Ihnatko is a technology journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a well known tech author.

Follow @ihnatko

10. Jim Dalrymple

PeerIndex: 62

Editor in Chief of LoopInsight. In the past Dalrymple held several positions at Macworld over the 10 years he worked there, including his final job as Editor at Large, before leaving in May 2009.

Follow @jdalrymple

11. Arnold Kim

PeerIndex: 57

Arnold Kim is the owner of MacRumors, a popular Apple rumors website. His other projects include TouchArcade and AppShopper. You can read his personal blog here.

Follow @arnoldkim

12. Chris Latko

PeerIndex: 57

Latko is a self-employed IT Professional with rich experience in Web development. Read his personal blog, Dreaming Of Beetles.

Follow @clatko

13. John Siracusa

PeerIndex: 60

Siracusa has been a Mac user since 1984 and has spent the last decade as a professional web developer and freelance technology writer. Read his articles on Ars Technica.

Follow @siracusa

14. Adam Christianson

PeerIndex: 39

Producer and publisher of the MacCast, a podcast about all things Apple.

Follow @maccast

15. Kontra

PeerIndex: 69

“Veteran design and management surgeon, perennially in search of complex problems to operate on”, shares musings on strategic design on CounterNotions.

Follow @counternotions

16. Dan Frommer

PeerIndex: 71

Dan is a founding member of the Business Insider and Silicon Alley Insider editorial teams. writes about non-tech topics at FromeDome.

Follow @fromedome

17. Charles Arthur

PeerIndex: 73

The Guardian’s Technology editor. Find his personal blog here

Follow @charlesarthur

18. Ina Fried

PeerIndex: 69

Senior Editor at All Things Digital, covering mobile stuff, author of the Mobilized blog.

Follow @inafried

19. Zee M Kane

PeerIndex: 70

Editor-in-Chief of The Next Web, Like him?

Follow @Zee

20. Audrey Watters

PeerIndex: 67

Writer at ReadWriteWeb, you can find out more about her, here.

Follow @audreywatters

21. Ian Betteridge

PeerIndex: 61

Digital content strategist/editor at Redwood Publishing, blogs on Technovia.

Follow @ianbetteridge

22. Glenn Fleishman

PeerIndex: 63

Regular contributor to Economist.com, TidBITS Editor, read his personal blog here

Follow @glennf

23. Kevin Rose

PeerIndex: 95

Co-Founder and CEO of Milk Inc. Previously the Founder of digg.com.

Follow @kevinrose

24. Dan Frakes

PeerIndex: 58

Senior Editor and the “Mac Gems” columnist at Macworld, where he also covers the Mac and iOS platforms, general and mobile computing, digital media, and consumer audio.

Follow @danfrakes

25. Marco Arment

PeerIndex: 67

Creator of Instapaper, read his personal blog here.

Follow @marcoarment

Don’t forget you can follow how the Top 25 changes over time via our PeerIndex group, you can also take a look at our previous Top 25 lists on Augmented Reality and Cloud Computing.

In 2009, cloud computing went mainstream to become one of the biggest tech buzzwords of the year 2010. “Take it to the cloud!” has become a popular motto for large enterprises, small businesses and start ups. Cloud computing services exist along a spectrum from open public to closed private. Gartner expects all large enterprises will have a dynamic sourcing team in place by 2012 that is responsible for ongoing cloudsourcing decisions and management.

We partnered with PeerIndex, again, to come up with a list featuring the 25 most influential people on Twitter on the topic of cloud computing. Our top 25 list is not ranked based on their overall PeerIndex score , but based on each one’s topic resonance score, which measures how their actions within cloud computing community resonant with the community.

You can follow our list of Cloud Computing’s top 25 influentials on Twitter or get more info on the PeerIndex group we’ve created to stay on top of the latest news, insiders’ insights and emerging trends in cloud computing.

1. Jeff Barr

PeerIndex: 65

It comes as no surprise to find someone from Amazon on our #1. Jeff Barr is a Senior Manager at Cloud Computing Solutions at Amazon.com and a Web Services Evangelist. If you simply can’t get enough of his tweets, you can read his blog here.

Follow @jeffbarr

2. Werner Vogels

PeerIndex: 66

Werner Vogels is the CTO of Amazon and was one of the speakers of TheNextWeb conference in 2010

Follow @werner

3. James Urquhart

PeerIndex: 65

Urquhart describes himself in his Twitter bio as: “Father, husband, technologist, author: The Wisdom of Clouds (CNET), cloud computing SME” You can read his posts on cloud computing here.

Follow @jamesurquhart

4. Vanessa Alvarez

PeerIndex: 66

Vanessa Alvarez works as an analyst with Forrester covering storage. Her focus as a researcher is primary on storage architectures and strategy, the evolution of these as they relate to converged infrastructure and cloud computing scenarios.

Follow @vanessaalvarez1

5. Reuven Cohen

PeerIndex: 65

Founder of Enomaly, a world wide leader in Cloud Computing and creator of the CloudCamp series of events around the globe. You can read Cohen’s blog here.

Follow @ruv

6. Krishnan Subramanian

PeerIndex: 63

Better known as Krish, he is an industry analyst covering Cloud Computing and Open Source, an advisor, entrepreneur and blogger.

Follow @krishnan

7. William Toll

PeerIndex: 67

A cloud computing marketing professional that holds the position of VP, Marketing at the web performance company Yottaa.

Follow @utollwi

8. Dana Gardner

PeerIndex: 63

Gardner is president and principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions. He is also a blogger and podcaster.

Follow @Dana_Gardner

9. Mårten Mickos

PeerIndex: 61

The former CEO of MySQL is now the CEO of Eucalyptus Systems. Eucalyptus Systems delivers private cloud software that enables enterprises and government agencies to establish their own cloud computing environments.

Follow @martenmickos

10. Simon Wardley

PeerIndex: 63

Wardley currently works as a Researcher at Leading Edge Forum (CSC). You can read his posts on his personal blog “Bits or pieces?”.

Follow @swardley

11. Christofer Hoff

PeerIndex: 63

Director, at Cloud & Virtualization Solutions, STBU, Cisco Systems, Hoff is a busy man as he is also founder at HacKid and founder & Chief Goat Herder at CloudAudit. Read his blog here.

Follow @beaker

12. Michael Sheehan

PeerIndex: 62

Based in San Francisco Bay Area, Sheehan is a technology evangelist at GoGrid and blogger at HighTechDad.com

Follow @HighTechDad

13. Greg Knieriemen

PeerIndex: 63

Co-host at Infosmack, podcast on enterprise tech and  Vice President at Chi Corporation

Follow @Knieriemen

14. Zoli Erdos

PeerIndex: 63

Editor, publisher at CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars. Erdos is also a startup advisor and Program Chair at SVASE (Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs)

Follow @ZoliErdos

15. Randy Bias

PeerIndex: 60

CTO and Co-Founder at Cloudscaling, a cloud computing consulting firm

Follow @randybias

16. George Reese

PeerIndex: 62

Founder and CTO of enStratus Networks, founder of Valtira and O’Reilly Cloud Author.

Follow @georgereese

17. Simone Brunozzi

PeerIndex: 61

Amazon Web Services Technology Evangelist for Asia Pacific (APAC), read his personal blog here.

Follow @simon

18. Joe Baguley

PeerIndex: 61

CTO Europe at Quest Software

Follow @JoeBaguley

19. Denise Dubie

PeerIndex: 62

New Media Principal at @CAInc, editor/writer/techie focused on IT management, automation, service assurance @CAsvcAssur

Follow @ddubie

20. Jeremy Geelan

PeerIndex: 58

President & COO at Cloud Expo, Inc., Chairman at 21st Century Internet Group, Inc, Media Advisor at Kaazing Corporation and Founder at Web 2.0 Journal & Green Technology Journal

Follow @jg21

21. Rod Trent

PeerIndex: 64

Global Social Media, Community Manager at 1E and CEO, Owner at myITforum.com, Inc

Follow @rodtrent

22. James Governor

PeerIndex: 65

Principal Analyst and co-founder at RedMonk

Follow @monkchips

23. Stephen Foskett

PeerIndex: 61

Foskett Services, community organizer at Gestalt IT and File System Storage MVP at Microsoft

Follow @sfoskett

24. Sam Johnston

PeerIndex: 63

Technical program manager in the Site Reliability Engineering team at Google Switzerland

Follow @samj

25. Riitta Raesmaa

PeerIndex: 67

Entrepreneur, Founding Partner at Sopima. You can read her blog in English and Finnish.

Follow @raesmaa

Don’t forget you can follow how the Top 25 changes over time via our PeerIndex group and do let us know if we missed one of your fave thinkers on cloud computing in the comments.