Last week seven startups spent the week developing applications on the SharePoint 2010 platform at the first ever SharePoint 2010 SocialFest hosted by the Emerging Business Team at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus. While most of the developers had little to no SharePoint programming experience, they were selected based on their potential to extend the SharePoint platform with their unique and innovative applications in the emerging social business space.

During the week, they heard from developer experts, SharePoint engineering, SharePoint product management and a panel of tier one venture investors. On Friday, they presented in front of a panel of judges including Charles Schwab & Co. and McKesson where Huddle took first prize.

Here’s a look at what the contestants built on the SharePoint 2010 platform:

Calinda Software – Creating conversations in SharePoint

Calinda MindUP automatically captures, organizes and structures email interactions. It creates visual maps of all messages and attachments sent and received in an email conversation. At SharePoint 2010 SocialFest, Calinda developed a SharePoint 2010 “mail space” which parses and groups related conversations, helping teams get a view of their projects, enhancing collaboration.

Confer – Bringing ‘twitter-like’ conversations to SharePoint

Confer for SharePoint 2010 integration extends the simplicity of Confer’s microblogging web application into an organization’s SharePoint installation. Confer bridges the gap between internal and external employees, and simplifies the communication process.

Cortex Intelligence – Social media analysis for SharePoint

Cortex Intelligence brings external qualified social media, quantitative market data, text mining-enriched news articles and data from external sources into SharePoint 2010 using SharePoint web parts. Cortex also integrates with SharePoint enabling users to share, discuss and act on the insights triggered by the market intelligence.

Huddle – Synching SharePoint team sites externally

With Huddle for Microsoft SharePoint 2010, enterprise teams can invite external users into their daily workflow and synchronize their SharePoint document libraries with content stored on the Huddle network, or even on other SharePoint sites. SharePoint users can also gain access to their files through Huddle’s online, mobile and desktop applications.

Leverage Software – Social sharing for SharePoint

Leverage Software DesignSpace transforms a set of email threads into an on-demand social workspace – automatically, with no data entry or administration required – and then lets you share that information with others in your company through Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

Liaise – Keeps SharePoint as up to date as your last email

Liaise for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 turns text in email messages into structured KeyPoints (actions/issues, due dates, people and priorities) and ensures SharePoint is always up-to-date by automatically feeding messages, KeyPoints and attachments into SharePoint, providing real-time updates to: Task/Issue Lists, Discussion Boards, Site Calendars and Documents.

Loqu8 – Creating immersive experiences in SharePoint

Loqu8 Prelude integrates SharePoint 2010 lists and search results into a pop-up window that is contextual to the work they are doing. From applications, such as Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc., users can instantly access their SharePoint data by hovering their mouse over a word in their document. The Loqu8 Prelude pop-up window will display contextually relevant information from SharePoint.

Interested in seeing a little more on each solution? Check out this slideshow on Network World.

Lynda Ting is a Director for Emerging Business at Microsoft.