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As part of the twofour54 family, AppsArabia is proud to extend this special invitation to you. Please click on the invitation for more information and to RSVP.

• Date: Wednesday 21 Sept 2011
• Time: 10am to 1pm
• Venue: twofour54 campus in Abu Dhabi

Please be sure to click on the invitation to RSVP.

As you know, AppsArabia is part of the twofour54 family. Well, twofour54 is supporting a very exciting new web-series called Peeta Planet. The people behind Peeta Planet (the same people behind Wild Peeta) are exploring how apps could fit into their strategy and they would like to invite AppsArabia members to an open discussion / brainstorm in Dubai.

• When: Wednesday 3rd August 2011 from 4pm to 6pm
• Where: Wild Peeta Open Space restaurant at DIFC, outside the World Trade Center Metro Station (for directions, please Google-Map Wild Peeta or call 800-WILD)
• Why: Your input is valued (and there will be free Iftar shawarmas & peetas!)

What is Peeta Planet?

Peeta Planet is a web-series about two ex-corporate Emirati executives, turned social-restauranteurs, turned modern-day bedouins. Their journey takes them from the UAE to five trend-setting countries with the highest penetration of social media users. Then, through a series of social-media votes, are sent on a global adventure to meet amazing social-media communities across the world. Season One will be filmed in the UAE, Japan, Australia, US, UK, & Brazil.

What sets Peeta Planet apart from other shows?

Peeta Planet is building its content from bottom up through crowd-sourced social-media suggestions and voting. This ensures the highest level of content relevance and ownership by the community who will ultimately champion Peeta Planet amongst their own peers.

It will also be the first show that will continuously operate on three time-lines:

1. Social Media: The conversations related to voting, debating, gaming, and creating content, etc.
2. Web-TV: Watching what the social media community helped create
3. Traditional TV: Using previously unseen content for regional and international channels

Weeks before the pilot episode starts shooting, community members are thinking, conversing, building, and sharing Peeta Planet content. This is happening both on and off-line. On social media sites, in offices, schools, and homes. Brands are taking notice because they want to become more social (media) and organically connect with the social-media generation in innovative ways.

How could apps fit in?

App developers are seeing it as an opportunity to create new social apps by tapping into the Peeta Planet socialsphere. Welcome to Content Democracy.

Think of Twitter when it started. Then imagine the diverse range of apps that were developed by external developers over time. Would you have imagined that they would turn a simple thing like “running” into a social-media activity linked to Twitter followers? Similarly, we anticipate app developers will create equally imaginative apps that will feed off the Peeta Planet socialsphere. Peeta Planet intends to provide an open-API platform and work with community app developers to develop Peeta Planet apps for viewers. There are opportunities for app entrepreneurs to make money through the Peeta Planet ecosystem – depending on value added to consumers, sponsorships, etc. Apps could include functionality such as voting, chatting, sharing, gaming, checking-in, etc.

If you are able to attend then please send your name, Twitter username and mobile number to us at this email address: welisten@wildpeeta.com. And be sure to follow @WildPeeta and @AppsArabia on Twitter.

Click here for more details on Peeta Planet (use the password followus).

Whether you are a pro app developer or whether you are just starting out and fancy a career building apps, we can help you. We’re investing in app projects all the time and often the person with the killer app idea doesn’t have the full range of skills to actually create the app. That’s when we invite the AppsArabia members – who do have the skills – to submit a proposal to do the work for us on a fixed cost project basis.

Remember, as well as funding projects, we are also trying to help the developer community to …

• grow their businesses
• get better at what they do
• find the fair market rate to charge for their services

So, here’s what you need to do …

1. make sure you are a registered member of AppsArabia
2. set your mobile platform/SDK preferences correctly in your AppsArabia account
3. include your skills & experience (including app creds) in your AppsArabia profile description
4. be active on this site – engage in the forum, post comments, etc.
5. follow @AppsArabia on Twitter so you receive notifications

Then we will consider you when we are looking for developers to give work to!

PC World Middle East asked AppsArabia to write an article about what it takes to become an app entrepreneur in the middle east and how to succeed.

The 10 steps detailed in the article are:

1. What value will you provide?
2. Keep it simple
3. Who are you targeting?
4. Select your platform
5. Consider all revenue streams, pricing, forecast
6. Understand the costs & risks
7. Choose the right development partner
8. Quality, quality, quality
9. Plan the promotion
10. Launch, learn & evolve

Click here to read the article.

A great article by Brad McCarty @ TNW’s Apps Channel about how apps need to stand out to succeed. He argues that many new apps are clones or simply don’t fill enough of an existing need. Basically, if you haven’t thought about the demand for the app before you build it then you’re most likely going to have a “miss” and not a “hit”.

Click here to read the full article.

I spotted a great article on Digital Sinigang about what makes an app a best seller.

Click here to read the article.