Publishers by now are aware of several content management options for optimizing the display of their content on the numerous number of smart mobile devices available (e.g., iPhone, Windows Phone, etc.).  Sometimes, this functionality is part a general content management system (CMS) and, on other occasions, it takes the form of a specialized plug-in.  Now, new tools such as Tainoapp have come to the fore to help publishers actually create mobile apps that run natively on each device.

Tainoapp has been profitable since the day it launched a prototype of its software to its first customer.  Now, its customers hail from a variety of industries and include newspapers, magazines, state agencies, law firms and retail business, among others.  As evidenced by recent new, this space may have legs.  Last week, TechCrunch profiled a similar company named Appifier which creates IOS apps that can display WordPress content.

TainoApp implements a communication protocol on top of the content publisher’s CMS system, and provide ways of publishing this content as fully-native mobile applications for over 10 mobile platforms (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android phones and tablets, WindowsPhone7, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian, Meego, Bada, HTML5 and J2ME).  In the coming months, TainoApp will be able to boast integrations with 10 of the most widely used content management system (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, tumblr, ExpressionEngine, Squarespace, TypePad, Blogger and MovableType).

Thanks to Microsoft’s interest and support, the TainoApp team developed a version of their software that supports Windows phone.  Likewise, the team worked with Nokia to develop Symbian and Meego version and with Samsung developing mobile apps to be used by several mobile operators in the Caribbean (such as local telco Claro Communications).  According to Gerardo Molina, Senior Manager for Claro at Samsung, “What started off as an experiment in one specific market, thanks to TainoApp, has now expanded to the whole Caribbean region and has served as benchmark for Latin America.”

The founders behind TainoApp bring some unique capabilities to the company.  CTO Ricardo Alcocer has worked in the technology industry for more than a decade, is an accomplished magician and codes to the beat of heavy metal.  CEO Ramphis Castro has started a number of technology companies and has a background in technology and law.  Also, Ricardo has been active in the open source community while Ramphis has been helping develop local startups through a number of initiatives such as Startup Weekend.

Though the company is cash flow positive, Ramphis and Ricardo, say they are planning a US $150k round of funding.  More than the money, the Tainoapp team is looking to connect with investors that posses deep expertise and a network of contacts in order to help the company expand globally.

We have picked the most outstanding and promising startups in Latin America this year by way of nominations followed by a joint popular and editorial vote.

Background

Latin American entrepreneurship is having an impressive revival in the tech sector and this time around, there is activity throughout the whole region, where in the first wave, it was mostly concentrated in Argentina.

From the new generation we have seen Sonico raise $4M, Buscapé sell for $374M, Chile becoming a haven for tech investors and entrepreneurs, Argentine entrepreneur Santiago Siri make presence not only once but twice with Popego and the Whuffie Bank respectively in TechCrunch 50 two years in a row, as well as newcomer ClaseMovil (also in our Top10).

Those are just to mention a few of the international cases, as there is a miriad of other local and regional success stories, not only for specific startups but also of the community as a whole. We have seen the rapid rise of startup-centric communities like TequilaValley in Mexico, Lima Valley in Perú and Palermo Valley in Argentina to name a few.

Opportunities and Challenges

The benefit of startups in Latin America right now is how cheap the technology has become to innovate, and the top entrepreneurial talent that has resulted from a cultural shift towards entrepreneurship and innovation.

The main obstacle of very limited venture capital going in the consumer web or technology sector remains. However, many of the startups on this list have adjusted to this reality by making their operations very lean and efficient and in some cases, aiming for and achieving their break even points quicker.

Our Top 10

What is impressive to see this year is that although some of the startups are aiming at local or regional markets, the majority are actually taking the leap to compete globally.

Here goes the list:

(In alphabetical order)

• Clasemovil: (México) Seeks to improve education in students between the ages of 6 and 12 through a platform and wide array of edutainment content. Although they are currently only in Spanish, they were selected to present at TechCrunch50 (Clasemovil in PulsoSocial)
• Drimio: (Brásil) An social application for Brazilian brands to communicate with its consumers sharing ideas, opinions and content (Drimio in Startupi)
• Eventioz: (Argentina) This startup has created a freemium tool to create, promote and charge for events online. (Eventioz in Winred)
• Helpsaude: (Brazil) Connects patients with doctors, hospitals, dentists and other health provider and has a very robust search and filtering option. It is like Kayak for healthcare. It’s database has more thane one million health providers. (Helpsaude in Novobr)
• Joincube: (Argentina) Joincube allows companies or work teams to have a private community of practice or social network. Like Ning for the internal operation of a company. (Joincube in PulsoSocial)
• Letmego: (Colombia) With the first beta built in 3 months in a total immersion program (7 developers living and working together in the same house for 90 days) Letmego turns lodging upside down. The travelerers post their itinerary, and lodging providers bid for their stay. (Letmego in PulsoSocial)
• Navegg: (Brazil) Navegg is a web analytics tool that provides demographic statitistics like age, income, education and gender in real-time. (Navegg in wwwhatsnew)
• Smowtion: (Argentina) Comes from the creators of Keegy.com and is an advertising network for independent publishers, very similar to the federated media model, and remarkably, they reached cash-positive in a couple of months.  (Smowtion in  softwarelogia)
• Tweetboard: (Puerto Rico) Tweetboard brings the twitter conversations back to a website by creating a forum-style slider window on any site with a short javascript snippet. (Tweetboard in PulsoSocial)
• Twitea.me: (México) One of the attractive elements of twitter, at least in the beginning, was the ability to interface with it via SMS, a feature only available in the U.S. and limited elsewhere worldwide. What twitea.me has done is built an SMS application to send and receive Tweets in México ( Twitea.me  in PulsoSocial)

On november 30th we will be hosting a live streaming event on pio.la where each startup will have 3 minutes to present their startup to the audience and a panel of judges in order to compete for best startup of the year. Stay tuned for more details of the event.

Este año quisimos escoger los  emprendimientos web más emprendedoras de toda América latina con ayuda de la comunidad.  De ahí que, de las 43 Startups nominadas en la ronda anterior,  se seleccionaron sólo 10 Startups mediante el voto de la comunidad y la decisión de un jurado editorial.

Este Top 10 está formado por Startups de diferentes países  la región tales como Brasil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, México y Puerto Rico.

(En orden alfabético)

• Clasemovil: Esta Startup mexicana  busca  mejorar  la educación en Latinoamérica para estudiantes entre 6 y 12 años, a través de tres plataformas que integran  las necesidades de los estudiantes y profesores. Posibilitando con esto  que los estudiantes de primaria puedan  aprender,  crecer e interactuar en una comunidad  de aprendizaje online. (Artículo en PulsoSocial)
• Drimio: A través de su plataforma, integrada con diversas herramientas y aplicaciones, esta Startup brasileña busca convertirse en vía de comunicación para  las marcas y sus consumidores.  Gracias a ello, en este espacio  se pueden compartir  opiniones, ideas y contenido en un mismo lugar. (Artículo en Startupi)
• Eventioz: Este emprendimiento argentino posibilita la creación, promoción y administración de eventos.  En su plataforma permite publicar la información de un eventos en un mismo lugar. Es un completo servicio que viene integrado con diferentes herramientas y gran variedad de opciones. (Artículo en Winred)
• Helpsaude: Plataforma brasileña que conecta a los pacientes a los médicos, dentistas, hospitales, clínicas y otros proveedores de servicios médicos. Poseen una gran  base de datos de Brasil, con más de un millón de proveedores registrados. (Artículo en Novobr)
• Joincube: Desde Argentina nació esta red social para las empresas,  cuyo  propósito es reducir un 40 por ciento del tiempo que, generalmente, demandan las tareas administrativas y la integración  efectiva del equipo de trabajo. (Artículo en PulsoSocial)
• Letmego: Startup colombiana con visión global, que ofrece una novedad nunca antes vista en el mercado de la industria hotelera dentro de la web: se trata de la posibilidad de que los viajeros presenten su itinerario y reciban diferentes ofertas de alojamiento. (Artículo en PulsoSocial)
• Navegg: Servicio brasileño que  permite analizar cada  visitante de una página web. Para ello, reúnen los datos de navegación de los usuarios de los sitios que se encuentren agregados en Navegg y, mediante el análisis multivariado, encuentran el perfil demográfico de cada visitante. (Artículo en Startupi)
• Smowtion: Ubicada en Argentina, esta Startup es  una red de publicidad nacida en la Web. Se encargar de conseguir los mejores anunciantes, conseguir sus órdenes y organizar sus pagos para luego vincularlos con los bloggers leídos por el público a los que el anunciante apunta. (Artículo en softwarelogia)
• Tweetboard: Desde Puerto Rico se creó este microforo  de Twitter que, diferente a cualquier otra aplicación,  se ejecuta en un sitio web. Su función principal es que permite traer las conversaciones a un website  que se generan desde Twitter y viceversa . (Artículo en PulsoSocial)
• Twitea.me: De origen mexicano, éste  es un servicio  que permite actualizar tu estado en Twitter desde  el celular como si fuese un SMS.   Así mismo posee la  característica de que los usuarios reciban en su celular mensajes desde Twitter enviados por sus followers. (Artículo  en PulsoSocial)

Sin embargo, lo mejor es que está selección no concluye con en este Top10 sino que  este 30 de noviembre se hará  una competencia llamada PiolaPS10, con el cual se buscará elegir a la mejor Startups de este 2009.

Para ello, en la plataforma de Pio.la,  cada  Startups deberá presentar su emprendimiento durante 3 minutos frente a un grupo de jurados; quienes darán su Feedback y analizarán el producto, la innovación, el mercado, el modelo de negocio y  el management team.  Al final de la jornada, se presentarán los resultados y la Startup seleccionada no sólo se llevará algunos premio sino también el reconocimiento de haber sido la mejor de todo América latina.

Sin duda, será un gran oportunidad para que las Startups de la región se hagan visibles y aprovechen la retroalimentación que se dará tanto por parte de los jurados como por público en general; pues al ser un evento en vivo cualquier persona con conexión a Internet podrá ser  parte de la audiencia.

Tweetboard is a Twitter-powered “microforum”, different from any Twitter app in the same category, Tweetboard runs on your site rather than being a “destination” site.  In essence brings the twitter conversations to your website and viceversa.

This incredibly clever application still in alpha that was created by Puerto Rican entrepreneur Juan Muriente whom I met while he was working with fellow PulsoSocial columnist and Argentine entrepreneur Matias Paterlini back in May. The lead developer, Oleg Ignatiuk, is from Belarus (Russia). A truly global startup indeed.

Muriente flew to Argentina and worked with Paterlini for two weeks pushing this application. The whole development up until yesterday’s alpha release took six weeks. Among the things that stands out from this startup is that:

• Built by entrepreneurs from Latin America
• It is self-funded (for now)
• It has reached #1 trending tropic on twitter (very clever social media marketing, they beat michael jackson!)

Finally, in terms of the application itself, the most valuable attribute that I see is its potential for generating viral traffic. Juan Muriente explains;

TweetBoard Has a viral traffic generating potential proportional to the amount of tweeting conducted via your TB; Every tweet (or reply) posted via the app is pushed to Twitter with a link back to your site. The link back is not a lame attempt at bringing twitter traffic to your site, but a means of providing *context* to the conversation: Parent tweets are appended with a http://posted.at/XXX link, while replies are appended with http://inreply.to/XXX (Friendfeed uses this approach with http://ff.im/XXX, as well as Disqus, with http://disq.us/XXX – none provide context with the link itself, as TB does.)

Alpha Invites
One of the elements of their marketing success is that you can request an automatic invite via twitter, however, a lot of users have not been able to get invites due to the limits of the twitter API, but Muriente assures that they will arrive eventually.