FbStart Apps of the Year Revealed

What do MomentCam, Whichit, Qranio, Workflow and Hunger Crunch have in common? They were all winners of Facebook’s first annual FbStart Apps of the Year awards.

The inaugural winners were revealed Thursday during the social network’s F8 global developers’ conference in San Francisco.

Facebook partner-development executive Michael Huang announced the winners in a Newsroom post, saying that the apps were judged across four principles — growth and engagement, experience and design, efficiency at scale and leveraging Facebook’s platform — and the judging panel included:

• Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans
• Facebook director of platform product Deborah Liu
• Parse co-founder and CEO Ilya Sukhar
• Entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Calacanis
• Facebook vice president of platform partnerships Justin Osofsky
• SoundCloud VP of platform Manolo Espinosa

Huang also offered the following details on the winning apps:

App of the Year: MomentCam (Android), iOS). Based in China, MomentCam lets people create cartoons and caricatures from photos of themselves or friends. You can add objects like hats and glasses to your photo, choose a background and share your \"Momie\" with the world.

Europe, Middle East and Africa App of the Year: Whichit (Android, iOS). From the U.K., Whichit is a social polling app that helps people get opinions from friends or people in the Whichit community. The app lets them poll other people to make a decision, like choosing the perfect outfit or the best new car.

Latin America App of the Year: Qranio (Android, iOS). Brazil-based Qranio incentivizes learning by offering virtual currency for completing knowledge-based trivia that players can later redeem for real prizes.

North America App of the Year: Workflow (iOS). U.S.-based Workflow is a productivity tool that lets you automate actions between apps on your iOS device. With its easy drag-and-drop interface, Workflow helps your device and favorite apps interact with each other — for example, you can send a message including the last picture you took, create animated GIFs or share the song you’re listening to.

Social Good App of the Year: Hunger Crunch (Android, iOS). Hunger Crunch was created by Rice Bowls, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that helps people fight hunger through virtual and real-world experiences. 100 percent of the profits from any in-app purchases in the game help feed orphaned children around the world.

The developers of MomentCam, the grand-prize winner, will receive $50,000 in cash and $25,000 in Facebook ad credit, while the creators of the other winning apps will take home $5,000 in cash and $5,000 in Facebook ad credit.

Readers: Have you used any of the winning apps?