A year ago, Polldaddy widgets were already a big deal and that is why they got acquired by Automattic. Now they look to be at the top of the game when it comes to Polls and Widget Polls:

PollDaddy has just released some of its latest stats, and they don’t fail to impress: the company is now serving 430 million poll impressions per month, with a reach of over 74 million people worldwide, giving it a Quantcast rank equivalent as the 22nd most visited online service in the world.

I do have to admit that before Polldaddy came to be all the way back in  2006. Poll widgets were boring and not really well done since they were kinda ugly and not asynchronous (caused extra page loads)

So i think it is well deserved for them to be at the top spot. enough for them to be going into JS-KIT territory with Rating Widgets. that will be a interesting thing to see since according to Techcrunch they even plan to integrate that data to their Polldaddy Answers site. Something that could also mean a new kind of sub-site can emerge from that too. Techcrunch talks about a Digg competitor but i don’t see how they could manage a social news site or how Matt would want that. If he were to enter that space i think it would be more logical for him to build a social blog directory for WordPress powered blogs first since social news site are very tricky to manage. I am seeing them more probable to step into RateItAll territory with consumer review ratings. so maybe it is time for Lawrence Coburn to keep alert on that possibility.

Polldaddy

via Techcrunch

Related posts:

1. Polldaddy releases Polldaddy Jr, Polldaddy API , Media Polls and WordPress Plugins
2. PollDaddy: now a knowledge pool of polls and surveys
3. Polldaddy.com Works on MySpace

KickApps is a strange startup. its main business is Website Socialization. but it is also partly a Widget Company because a lot of that Socialization is archived via Widgetization. you can also make Very basic utility Widgets or some nice and simple Media Widgets via its Widget and Video Player Studio and add advertising to it. in a way that reminds me of SproutMixer and Musestorm.

So it competes with Ning, Flux,  SproutMixer and to a lesser degree with all the main Widget Companies.

Thing they will continue to do so because they have got $14 million more in funding as Techcrunch reported:

“KickApps CEO Alex Blum confirms to me that the company did indeed raise a C round of $14 million with a new lead investor, North Atlantic Capital. Existing investors Softbank, Spark Prism and Jarl Mohn also participated. KickApps either splits ad inventory with publishers on the pages created on its platform (60 percent to KickAps, 40 percent to publishers) or lets publishers buy out its portion of the ad inventory for $3 to $6 CPMs. Most larger customers choose to control the ad inventory themselves, which suggests that when social networking features are wrapped into a larger site, the ad rates don’t have to be counted in dimes (as they do on much of Facebook and MySpace)”

KickApps

via TC

Related posts:

1. Clearspring forms strategic partnership with KickApps to increase advertising revenue
2. Clearspring raises 18 million dollars in funding
3. LabPixies raises 1 million in funding

SproutMixer is the brother site to SproutBuilder. The latter lets you create very simple and easy media widgets or very very basic utility widgets. This is not the goal of SproutMixer. its goal is to bring money to sprout and to others because it about reusing the technology developed to create Sproutbuilder to allow easy creation of  Ad Widgets for Direct Advertising or for Brand Marketing with good analytics and high spread sharing qualities.

The problem before with bringing solid Analytics to Flash Widgets was that it failed to be deeply integrated with the flash object. it also needed to be developed by each Widget Company on their own and its was a very strong theme in widgets in 2008. the Widget Companies that invested more on Widget Analytics and understanding what that meant was Clearspring followed by Gigya and Musestorm. This left out other Widget Companies in disadvantage since they could not invest as heavily on that.

Google now has cutout the work for all Widget Companies by Working with Adobe to bring Google Analytics to Flash Objects. this breakthrough finally will make sure that Ad Widgets and Widget Advertising can grow a lot faster on 2009. of course that Google to be interested in this is because they are both the biggest blessing and curse to all Widget Companies. because while they bring good technology that can now be used by all. they also bring Hard Competition since they compete in the Widget Space in practically all areas. from Desktop widgets to web widgets and from media Widgets to Ad Widgets.  

This means that the hard work on Analytics by the Widget Companies i mentioned will not go to waste and will be useful to keep competing all around.

SproutMixer could not be easier to use. it is the very same ease of use of its older brother at SproutBuilder. so the only thing that changes is the Focus of what is being done and the why.

Since Google Analytics can now work for Flash. Sproutmixer was the perfect way to Demo the benefits from that because they are not only Advertising and Marketing Widgets. they are also remixable. that means you can change the way these widget look and obtain another level of user engagement thanks to that. in a way that should make Marketers savory it since it is all trackable.

And not only they are remixable. but they also count with a  High Spread Sharing provided by Gigya Wildfire.

Really Cool Stuff that will surely assure that Widgets don`t lose steam on 2009.

SproutMixer

Related posts:

1. Advertising Age On Widget Marketing
2. Clearspring forms strategic partnership with KickApps to increase advertising revenue
3. Eyeblaster takes Widget Advertising Global with Nike Football Video Widget

Facebook is such a killjoy lately for the two biggest fb8 app developers. just when slide managed to recover Top Friends after more than a week of inactivity, the application fell from grace on active users but managed to retain 1 million active users. but that was not the same for RockYou superwall that has fallen below  600k  active users from 2.4 million active users in a matter of days when Facebook cut out the notification and invitation invitation  from superwall.

Unlike Slide case of Hackery being the cause. SuperWall offense is its spammy nature. what is interesting is the why o such decrease compared with Top Friends?. as someone who has suffered from getting notifications of both apps it is clear that Top Friends got a better engagement and retention level because of the sociological factor in the app being different from superwall. superwall is a simple utility that overlaps with Facebook Wall and its main attractive is that is promises to enhance that app. in the case of Top Friends it is a Automatic and persistent utility with a lower level of manageability than super wall and removing it would cause a immediate doubt in the user toward the reaction his/her  “top friends” may have if the app is removed. it is a subtle but subconscious thing.

I say it so because i had reactions like that when i removed that app unlike with SuperWall where there is not that social element because in Facebook “lore” being a “Top Friend” means being a actual friend.

SuperWall on the other hand is more like a chore to you if you don`t have the app because it is a replicated communication channel that overlaps with the original app. without notifications, users are more than willing to let that app go without second thougths about it since there is no activity to be had.

Facebook punishes RockYou`s Baby  via AllFacebook

Related posts:

1. Earn cash with Widgetbox and RockYou
2. RockYou Wants To Be A Social Network Game Widget Powerhouse
3. Slide “Top Friends” now back in Facebook

Two very quick little tips that must be obvious by now for some but maybe not so obvious for most:

Add Analytics to your iGoogle Gadgets

Google has been furiously adding Analytics to everything and making sure people can use it. iGoogle Gadget developers should not expect no different. you can add Analytics to your iGoogle gadgets just as easy as you can add collaborative qualities to them.

One line of code , a declarative call here and then just calling it with your gadget code.

iGoogle Gadgets Analytics

Export all your user data from iGoogle

if you want to use another Google account but moan at the idea of recreating your iGoogle startpage. you only need to export your data and take it to the new account to recreate it in minutes.

“* iGoogle lets you download the list of gadgets, feeds, themes and their corresponding options if you go to the settings page and scroll down to the "Export / Import" section. The resulting XML file can be imported to another Google account and those who are familiar with XSLT could covert iGoogle’s data file to OPML, so you can subscribe to the feeds in Google Reader or any other feed reader.”

So not only you can take that data and recreate your iGoogle page easily but also get a easy way to do the same for your Google Reader Feed list.

iGoogle Data Export

via  GOS

Related posts:

1. iGoogle MySpace Gadget using Data Availability to come in August
2. iGoogle: Finance Gadget Suite and Data API
3. The New iGoogle gets Widgetized Google Services integration. is this Google idea of a Web OS?