This is one of those cases where the long title is not only needed but even with the long title. it don´t covers the service overall concept.
WebCards is a Venture backed d by SmallTown which is focused in Promo Local Business Listing and then extends from there.
With webcards. they have done a mashup of many old concepts that work as one thing taking the Widget as what it glues everything together. and those would be the WebCards, these are Widgets that simulate a presentation site. a common business promo website. one of the most common things ever but placed inside a widget. the widget represents your business website and that is served as a independent page as inside a specially promoted local business listing.
Why i say it is specially promoted?. because i counts with some SEO-SEP magic that will assure your WebCard Widget landing page is not only indexed by Search Engines but has a good position in them. how?. because they submit your page to the search engine. how?. well, that is not disclosed but given that you pay a minimum of 9dlls a month and up to 600dlls you can guess that for such a price it is not just about having a totally customizable webcard.
The idea is great it combines many common promotion tactics into one and then gives it a “web 2.0″ approach to execute it. and considering there is no free version of this because it really cannot be a free version for it to actually work. i think they have something good going on here. it can work and thrive simply because i have seen the voracious industry there is around business listing and local commerce listings and SEO-SEP promotion by separate. offering something that does more than a bit of each one of them while offering something new.
There is lots to read, so if this interest you, check their page.
Considering Sprout last update less than a month ago. i am glad they have raised money and not surprised they have raised money. Sprout now counts with a 5 million funding round to take their ambitions of easy widget creation, spreading and managing dreams to transform into a solid model they can grow on with.
They should not have problems. there is nothing like what they do right now. even if they do face some competition in the Flash site creation part with Wix. something that may make them to stay focused 100% in Widgets. always a good thing.
And in a very fitting note, they now release their Press Releases in a Widget. something that we are going to start seeing more and more.
You like to visit blogs like post secret, do you feel the need to confess at church or sometimes think of what would it be like to know other people secrets?.
Well, you don`t have to go far to have just that. you can use this vista sidebar Gadget called confessions and know some anonymous secrets or even confess one of your own if you feel like it.
If you are a active user of Twitter and your favorite startpage is iGoogle, you already know that there are some options for you to have Twiter integration into it. but lets face it. some suck and the rest are not cool or good enough to be considered usable without cringing a little.
That is not the case of Betwittered. This Twitter iGoogle Gadged developed by Meta_Robert from 32hrs.com is pretty much a miniaturized version of your Twitter Web Page and that is a good thing. so you can update Twitter while still looking at something pleasant.
It is notable to add that the Gadget is under continuous development so it may get to a point where it has all the web client features..right now it just have all the ones you need.
You can see a screenshot of it here in its actual size so you get a hang of it. i am now a user of it. i find truly the best twitter iGoogle Gadget so far.
You can get further information or do feature request at the developer page too if you want.
I just had posted about Quibblo days ago saying that they were doing great and that Polldaddy should watch out and they just added a new great feature to their already very complete poll, surveys and Quizzes Widgets. they have added in widget tracking stats to them so you can know where your poll was placed too and where in the places it was placed it had its best performance. so in other words, they count with their own engagement tracking and stats.
These stats can be compared to the stats you get from YouTube that tell you where your video was linked and how many clicks where made from that link.
These quick tracking stats are added to the widget in the “more” tab where the profile card of the quibblo user that created the poll is shown advising that the complete stats can be seen in the Poll page where you can also see comments to that poll.
in one word : Brilliant.
The only thing i would add to that widget would be the way to send a comment, private or public directly from the widget to make it truly genius.
Unless my Birthday Calendar is wrong, then it means that today 11 of May is Derek Anderson Birthday. now he reaching dangerously towards the forties but still not cranky and old, just plan old
I would tell you more about him but Derek is a reserved man of few words, it is possible that me wishing him happy birthday publicly is already embarrassing enough.
So lets wish Happy Birthday to him all right?.
So Feliz cumpleaños buddy, i hope you pass it great and if not, don`t worry you still have many to come.
Widgets are all about the Distributed Web, they can easily place any content everywhere without you have to go for it once you have it inside a widget and Distributed News and Opinion is something that formed part of the very first modern Widgets years back.
Spleak Media Networks want you to discuss freely about anything in terms of Celebs, Sports and Politics and it is doing so by allowing interaction inside the widgets to measure the approval of opinion in a specific subject or matter within the themes they offer.
So if you are interested in news and opinion discussion interaction, you will then be interested in these widgets.
The widgets are flash based and count with high spread sharing provided by Gigya so you can place them everywhere.
Previously known as the Widgety Goodness Conference. WidgetWebExpo is the evolution of that where Ivan Pope decided to move it from the U.K to New York as a way to give it more impact and make it less British and i guess that sometimes that can be a good thing.
The WidgetWebExpo will be having place this June 16 and 17 in the New York Marriott
*No, neither me or Derek are going to be there because Ivan Pope didn’t` invited us. yeah i know, what a meanie right?. and yet you have me here supporting his event. i think that speaks volumes of me. but don`t worry karma will get Ivan some day, you will see*
All kidding aside, this looks like a great event with some fine presentations by various widget expert panelists and people in the know.
Here are some of the relevant details as directly posted in the WidgetWebExpo site:
Extend and optimize your marketing through web, mobile and desktop Widgets
Learn from major agencies, widget tool vendors, developers and media groups who are using widgets on the web and on mobile, desktop and other platforms.
Map out your widget strategy from a commercial and technical perspective
Whether you are a widget maker or a widget user, this is the place to learn, to share and to become inspired.
We are bringing together a broad range of experts to discuss widgets from a commercial and a technical perspective.
WidgetWebExpo will look at one of the key emerging online trends: how to utilize the power of widgets to carry your brand to the world. Widgets offer huge potential as carriers of marketing, brand and advertising messages into social networks. Successful widgets are viral in nature can distribute your content or marketing message across the internet. This conference will inform and inspire you, giving you a thorough understanding of the opportunities and how to leverage them:
what role do widgets play in a cross platform strategy?
what tools are available for the development and distribution of widgets?
what destinations do widgets go to and how do I get them there?
how do I track and analyse widgets once they have left home?
Our speakers, from top level agency, widget tool and social network companies are at the leading edge of working with this dynamic space.
The WidgetWebExpo conference is aimed at professionals in the marketing, brand, media and advertising industries. It will pose and attempt to answer some of the key questions around widgets and offer you the opportunity to meet and network with many of your peers engaging with this space.
Directors & Heads of E-Commerce/Interactive Marketing
Marketing & New Media managers
Strategists/Analysts/Consultants
(working in the online space)
Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs
(with widget tools or widget based strategies)
Chaired by Ivan Pope, founder of Snipperoo, widget blogger and internet visionary, the agenda covers:
Widgets for beginners: Widget tools: Widget marketing: Widget destinations: Big Media: APIs: Mashups: Programmable web: Large companys using widgets: Where’s the money in widgets: Enterprise widgets: Non-profit widgets: widgetized Intranet: Widgetising established content: Blog platforms: Social networks relating to widgets: All Google’s widgets: The power of Affiliate widgets: is SEO the hidden value in widgets: widget Metrics: Case studies: choosing widget technologies: Tools and platforms compared: Making widgets go viral: managing Widget content: Widget publishing: Licencing widget content: Open standards for widgets: Opensocial: Dataportability and many more WidgetWeb wonders.
Formerly the Widgety Goodness conference that took place in the UK in December 2007
You can know even more about it in its Site and Blog:
Now that we know Slideshare is going to be around and active for for the foresable future, how about some blog bling from them?
Yes, if you just started using Slideshare or are still hesitating to use their service. it would be good for you to know that they also offer you a Blog sidebar widget so you can promote your SlideShare presentations in your blog.
it is a flash widget so you can even put it in your Social Network profile if you wish and the customization in the widget is all about the numbers of slots per widget and what slideshare presentations you want to promote in it. so it is really a basic widget. don`t expect more from it.
But maybe you only want to promote your slideshare account and don`t want to have to design a badge or a button for it.
Slideshare is also offering 3 mini-badges (buttons) so you can do just that.
oEmbed is the name of a proposed Open Format Spec for Embed media that would allow a easy way to link to embeddables with a early focus on Video and Photos but that could pretty much be used for most if not all kind of widgets.
The idea comes from quite a interesting group of individual including Flickr Cal Henderson , Pownce Finest Leah Culver and Mike malone , and OpenDNS Richard Crowley.
Why would this be a great idea to be implemented further?. simple. it allows easy embedding of media in sites, blogs and social networks for example by providing users to only need a link to their media as a way to have their media embedded into their profiles. the same goes for Blogs and regular a other kind of startups like Pownce that is the one using that approach in their service where you only need to link to photos or videos to have them embedded in your Notestream (or inforiver if you will) like you can easily see in my own Pownce Profile.
Right now the one using it are Flickr, Viddler, Pownce, Qik, and Revision3. so you can see that right now it is all about quick video and photo embedding considering the ones who are proposing oEmbed and also the ones using it. that still don`t means it cannot get used for more as it progresses.
I think that blog platforms and Social aggregators would be the most benefited of adopting oEmbed right now and i hope they do. that would do my job easier here at Widgets Lab by making widget reviewing and showing way easier that it is now. oEmbed is a great idea i hope catches on.
You can check out how oEmbed works with this form created by Viddler
As now made “official” by techcrunch, Spotplex is now water under the bridge. sad because i liked the widget. i think it served a useful purpose because the way it attempted to be the “automated Digg for blogs” and yes it failed not because it was a bad product. it was good at one point, then it was ok and suddenly it became just so-so. that signs of decay means death in the tech industry.
And it had some serious growing problems. it was like the start up had no CEO behind it and it were a ship without destination. in almost a year and half it only had 3 significant updates that were not near enough. updates you usually been covered by other startups in half the time that minimum.
I also noted it failing a lot from a month ago until it just shut down some days ago. i thought they were updating it because that is what happened the last time they updated the widget. sad surprise to know they just were calling it quit.
That was the problem. Spotplex didn’t t knew what they wanted to do, and never truly improved in what they were supposed to be doing.
Still a sad thing to see them go. i would love if a company like AOL would buy its remains to integrate them into Sphere. that would be a sweet combo to have. in the meantime i guess i will replace them with AideRSS and that is a good option if you were using SpotPlex and what to replace it with something “similar” to it.
In terms of documents recreation, the most saturated market in web 2.0 is without a doubt “powerpoint like” solutions for Slideshows and such.
there was such a explosion of them, we have only covered the main ones and left the rest untouched unless they were truly worthy. so i guess that can be one of the blogosphere faults in the recent powerpoint inclined web 2.0 solution where almost 10 of them have dried up and dies in the past months.
That will not be the case of SlideShare now it has got funding for 3 million dollars to survive the storm and there will be a storm because of:
1.-Google Docs progression (mostly Ajax based)
2.-Adobe Share progression (Flash/Flex)
3.-Office Live progression (Silverlight)
i mean, while i celebrate SlideShare funding, i am also looking into a future where the Web Office Solutions take the center stand as will also do the Digital Document startups like Scribd and DocStoc in all this kind of Widget Solutions.
Xobni is not a startup you would normally see here at Widgets Lab but they are great and my Favorite OutLook plugin. Microsoft have already tried to buy the for 20 million, offer that was declined because it was not enough money to clear it off. we will not get on what that means but it is now also clear that Xobniis trying to get into web email and have not found yet a way to do it that makes sense for what they have to offer.
That could change now because they acquired Firedrop a old web 1.0 company that diluted in the Dot Com crash and that dates back to 2000. their great ideas was called Zaplets. zaplets are pretty much widgets for e-mails. they looked like smart e-mail signatures to today standards but considering they were shown in 2000, they are actually quite impressive for that time and foreign and strange. so no wonder they failed to gain any traction. the idea was 5 years too early. if they had launched in 2005, by today they would mainstream so Xobni thinks it is not too late for that idea.
I second the notion, i always have wanted widgets that made sense to be used in E-mails and this makes sense. imagine how could they interact with a xobni browser plugin? it would bring the Xobni desktop idea to the web.
I predicted Widget Support for Email as something that should be realized in 2008 so i guess it may happen after all.
Sometimes i do omissions by mistake or because i forgot i had not posted it.
This time around it is a little of both. Mike Jones, the CEO of widget and widget apps Userplane now owned by AOL (where he also got a title in) did a good a measured post on the economic side of Widget during a time where the USA economy is doing bad and the dollar is also doing bad because of it and how the focus in small niche markets can allow for a great effect in pull for a sustainable business thanks to the way widget can blend and cover many small markets which in sum become a serious thing.
Marketing 2.0 have really jumped into widgets in full force, and that is because they are the bridge on how to use advertising and also work in the logistics so that widget can not only do whatever it was created for but generate a profit.
In this article Michael Jones big points are:
Widgets: The Macro Promise of Micro-markets
A review of what happened in the last year with the thriving of the big widget companies and how that has made clear that Widgets as a biz is not something to take lightly
The Changing Nature of the Media Buy
As money rolls in, the perception of a new entry into the landscape changes for good,
New Media, New Optimism
Simply put, the optimism of new is always a optimism that allow the naive and the hopeful to co-exist in a new venture/market
RevResponse is one of those widget cases where you really need to study them before making a post, and i did. RevResponse is a subsidiary of Netline corporation. a Online Marketing company from the old school that applied real world marketing to the internet, when the modern internet got moving back in 1994, i had barely a year online at those times, so they are not a new company you cannot trust, they have been around since forever in internet time.
Why do they deserve of your attention?. well, some people have wrote to me asking about more Adsense like solutions in widget form.
And there are options out their from not yet 100% proven companies like WidgetBucks, there are affiliate widgets from amazon and shop advertising, etc. but not really something “fool proof” in the way Adsense delivers revenue, that is the biggest virtue of Adsense.
Adsense already got Gadget Ads, but they are geared more into the promotional advertising at this moment that adsense in a widget.
RevResponse thinks they got a way to offer a Adsense like solution in a widget thanks to their Advert Marketing magic.
What is exactly that?. well in online terms is more complicated than in the real world but lets say that is that technique that involves a agency offering you promoted free stuff and that win money by doing so. where is the trick?. that is how base marketing works. transform that for the online world is easy if you got the ways for it. Netlines does because they own Tradepub. a agency who does just that.
weird?, it is not. but i wanted to read it directly from Netline so i asked for a faster and PR proof response from them and i got it:
David Fortino from Netline told me:
The widgets we make available specifically address a fundamental flaw with most widget placement on sites…the lack of a revenue stream. By their very nature, most successful widgets are specifically focused on providing value back to the audience. More often that not, the site publisher forgoes any revenue generation from the widget placement with the hopes of providing something helpful and innovative back to their audience. Why does this have to be the accepted norm? Why can’t you offer your audience something of value and make money while doing so? Those are the questions RevResponse addresses.
Unlike the few other widgets that provide a revenue stream, our revenue model is based on compensating the publisher for ever free request their audience generates. This is fundamentally different to the normal ecommerce/transaction based revenue model paying publishers for a sale. Our payouts typically range from $2.00 to north of $20.00 per free request depending on the content.
We offer a slick wizard for creating widgets…you can take a peak via this link if you want to play with it. Keep in mind that all of the links will send you to a TradePub.com landing page seeing that you are not logged-in. The destination pages you drive your audience have the capability to be white-labeled (co-branded) to match your UI if you would like via the use of another wizard.
So, with that explanation and links to see i went and tried out their Widget Generator and i was pleasantly surprised by how easy and compressive it is is.
it offer 3 ways to advertise:
Blog
Website
E-mail(or Feed)
and from there they offer 3 ways to do it in a blog, from contextual text, adspace (adsense like) Script Widget and Flash Widget so you can use it truly everywhere.
That is where is surprised me, because it indeed offered a easy way to generate and get revenue so it think that is worth a look considering they are doing it with widgets.
You can also customize the widget from size, to color to how featured or specific do you want the widgets to be.
Here you can take a little look at the Widget Generator in advance or you can try it out at this Link:
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