Seven social SharePoint apps built in a week

Microsoft released the public beta of SharePoint 2010 in November. Its claim to fame is its support of rapid app development. SharePoint has become one of Microsoft's most insanely popular products and Microsoft would like to see the 2010 version become the de facto platform for custom business social apps.

To that end, the folks at Microsoft's Emerging Business Team held a contest the week of Jan. 25. They invited seven start-ups known for their social networking products to come to Microsoft. The challenge: build a social networking app on SharePoint 2010 in one week. The stakes: the competitors got to present their app to a roster of venture capitalists, Fortune 500 customers and other SharePoint experts. The winner, announced Friday, Jan. 29, is Huddle (skip to Slide 5 to see Huddle's winning project). But all the apps are interesting and are presented here, alphabetically.