Category: Widget Strategy

Categories: Social Media, Social Networking, Widget Strategy Posted on

Bebo Reaches to Developers –Enterprise Companies Follow Suit

Left Image: Blake Commagere of Ohai tells of the success he’s had porting his popular apps from FaceBook to Bebo at AOL’s Mountain View campus. Last night, I was invited to AOL’s offices in Mountain View to learn of Bebo’s Dev Nite, a public courtship to startups and developers who make web applications on social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Hi5 (Examples: Vampires, Scrabulous, Superwall). For anyone that didn’t get the association (it slipped my mind for a sec) that Bebo was acquired by AOL, they keep the branding very loosely separated –likely on purpose. Bebo, a unique Social Network Bebo’s community segment focuses on user sharing and media, and is somewhat in between the experiences of the wild ‘self … Continue readingBebo Reaches to Developers –Enterprise Companies Follow Suit

Categories: Social Media, Web Marketing, Web Theory, Widget Strategy Posted on

Why Media and Corporations Should Allow Content to be Embeddable

If you work at an online media company, or are a stakeholder for content on a corporate website, forward this to the decision makers and engage in an email or in person dialog. How Media and Marketers are Missing an Opportunity A few days ago, I embedded a slideshow of fantastic images from Beijing’s opening Olympic ceremony. An embed is code that I can easily paste into my blog post, and it will show media (such as a youtube video). [The community will ‘scrape’ content that is valuable to them, often without attribution. Get ahead of their behaviors for your content and package it for them] Within a few hours, a commenter informed me of the actual photography source, the … Continue readingWhy Media and Corporations Should Allow Content to be Embeddable

Categories: Events, Facebook Strategy, Social Networking, Widget Strategy Posted on

An Overview of Facebook’s F8 Developer Community

Above: Over 1000 developers attending Facebook’s F8 Conference, picture above the developer showcase, photo from Brian Solis use with attribution by creative commons Facebook’s Developer Conference F8 I attended Facebook’s F8 developer conference in SF last week, and met with many of the application developers on the floor, or at their booths. First of all, for those that had booths, it was expected they were demonstrating success within Facebook (who allowed them to showcase). The event itself was a real production, from food, drinks, sessions, panels, the night ended with a private conference from Thievery Corporation, a popular down tempo artist. I also recommend you read my take on what Facebook Connect means for corporate websites. [“Applications are the Microsites … Continue readingAn Overview of Facebook’s F8 Developer Community

Categories: Case Study, Web Advertising, Web Marketing, Widget Strategy Posted on

Letting your Community Create your Advertisements

A few months ago, I covered Dell’s Green campaign called “Regeneration” which allowed community members to create their own art themed “green” and they were then given the opportunity to vote on which one was best. They turned over much of the marketing control to the community, while they become more of an enablement platform, rather than ‘forcing’ a message down their throat. They’ve taken the next step by assembling some of the winning drawings and created an emebeddable flash player that shows the art work being created in time-lapse style. Yes, you can see how the engaged community of artists hand drew each of these ads. As I understand it, they are not paid, this is voluntary, in hopes … Continue readingLetting your Community Create your Advertisements

Categories: Web Advertising, Web Marketing, Widget Strategy Posted on

Many Forms of Widget Monetization

Although there are many forms of Web Monetization (I’ve listed out nearly 15 forms), the newest iteration of web marketing: widgets, haven’t yet fully cashed in. Widget, Gadgets, Applications, Canvas Pages, Embeds, it goes on and one. One thing is clear, the rate of widgets continues to increase, take for example Facebook’s application platform has over 15,000, 20,000 applications in just about 9 months. Granted, many of those are slightly tweaked clones of each other, the top 100 widgets clearly has adoption. In some cases, there are sophisticated companies developing widgets, the RockYou’s and Slides of the world can really zero in and focus, or take the garage developers such as the two Russian developers who created Scrabulouos, or lastly, … Continue readingMany Forms of Widget Monetization

Categories: Case Study, Facebook Strategy, Social Networking, Widget Strategy Posted on

Case Study: Dissecting the Dell Regeneration Graffiti Facebook Campaign

Situation The market pressure to create technology products that protect or at least damage their impact to the environment continues to grow. Sustainability and green-tech campaigns are coming from nearly every tech company –esp hardware manufactures. Dell is no exception and launches this Regeneration campaign. [Dell Leaned on an Active Artist Community In Facebook to Create, Vote, Self-Regulate what it “Means to be Green” Regeneration Campaign] Goals I’ve not spoken with the Dell marketing team, but it’s pretty obvious this is a campaign helps to help improve Dell products to be more eco-friendly, and of course, spur affinity torwards the brand from green leaning consumers, the ReGeneration site has more details. Strategy Dell Computers, along with Federated Media (A social … Continue readingCase Study: Dissecting the Dell Regeneration Graffiti Facebook Campaign

Categories: Industry Index, OpenSocial, Widget Strategy Posted on

White Label Social Networks that support OpenSocial (For 2008)

If you’re not familiar with OpenSocial, it’s a protocol lead by Google to allow widgets and applications to be portable to any social network or website that part of the alliance. If you’re not familiar read “Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives” to get started, I explain it in pure business terms. I’m conducting research right now for an upcoming report on OpenSocial, I’ve already interviewed David Glazer and Kevin Marks from Google, and have interviewed Joseph Smarr from Plaxo, Nick O’Neill from All Facebook, and will be talking to David Recordon from Six Apart next week. I just asked my twitter network, (and received about 20 responses) about which white label social networks are open social compliant, and received quite … Continue readingWhite Label Social Networks that support OpenSocial (For 2008)

Categories: OpenSocial, Technology, Widget Strategy Posted on

OpenSocial, by Google’s David Glazer

(I’ve shifted back to blogging, as some folks were overwhelmed with my tweet updates, this makes more sense rather than a blow-by-blow tweet report) What is OpenSocial First, if you don’t know what OpenSocial is read this: Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives. Forrester will be publishing a report on OpenSocial in the near future (I interviewed David and Kevin Marks last night), I’m on point for that, stay tuned. “The cloud is about getting the computer out fo the way so that we can be more productive” -David Glazer, Google Web Strategy Summary You, a web decision maker are probally considering creating widgets to reach distributed communities. The opportunity to build an application once and let it run everywhere is … Continue readingOpenSocial, by Google’s David Glazer

Categories: MySpace, Social Networking, Widget Strategy Posted on

MySpace Developer Platform: Jim Benedetto, MySpace

Live notes as I sit in the front row at Graphing Social Platform. Web Strategy Summary MySpace continues to beckon to developers to build widgets and applications on their social networks. They are friendly to industry-wide specs such as OpenSocial and are putting efforts to protect privacy, and uphold security. Despite this welcoming to developers, constraints are set in place to protect the user experience as well as provide incentive for developers to create thriving applications. A balance will need to be found to appease MySpace, Users, Developers, and eventually new marketers. If you’re seeking more on widgets, please visit all posts tagged widgets. Current Status Current apps (as of today) are limited to 5 users, and is not full … Continue readingMySpace Developer Platform: Jim Benedetto, MySpace

Categories: Conference, Widget Strategy Posted on

Widget Strategies Panel

The four panelists did a great job yesterday handling my barrage of questions in the Widget Strategies and Social Platforms session, Hooman Radfar (Clearspring Technologies, Inc.), Walker Fenton (NewsGator), Pam Webber (Widgetbox), Ben Pashman (Gigya) discussed widgets strategies. I asked each of them to suggest an image or icon that best represents their company (an idea to make the panel more memorable from Pam) and they each suggested the following: Clearspring was like a cable, as they were a connector Newsgator was like a kitchen where you come and create Widgetbox was like a DIY Pottery store where you come in and make your own product Gigya was like a like a spine, as they were the backbone or infrastructure … Continue readingWidget Strategies Panel