Conny's and Suzanne's Work Snippets

Blockbuster getting sued

Careful not to participate in Facebook's Beacon program und makeing sure we understand the private data that's been changed.

In the lawsuit, quietly filed last week, Dallas County resident Cathryn Elaine Harris claims that Blockbuster violated the federal Videotape Privacy Protection Act by sharing information about her movie rentals and sales with Facebook without first obtaining her written consent.

Harris is seeking class-action status, and is asking for at least $2,500 for each violation of the statute, a 1988 law passed after a newspaper obtained the video rental records of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

When Facebook launched Beacon last November, the platform told members about their friends' e-commerce activity at Blockbuster and other sites. Initially, the program operated by default, meaning that unless members opted out, their rental information was sent to other Facebook users as part of Facebook's ad program. Harris alleges that this type of ad violated the federal video privacy law.

More:
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=80839&Nid=41637&p=941990

Labels: Widgets

Sound bites that might come handy one day

Call them widgets, gadgets, or wadgets, but businesses such as Kraft Foods, Nissan, and American Express are building brand identity using these software applications that can be embedded in a Web page or downloaded to a computer desktop.
"Widgets hold an interesting creative possibility to create a conversation with consumers," said Jeff Williams, associate director, creative, at Digitas, while speaking with three other widget experts at a Search Engine Strategies New York panel discussion this week.

While popular gadgets feature games and entertainment (Bejeweled, Tetris) or utilities (personal finance calculators, world clocks), advertisers are starting to build and promote their own applications

"Everything we can do as a Web site can be done with a gadget ad," he said. These tools can serve an assortment of marketing objectives, from lead generation to awareness building. He also offered up some best practices: keep ads under 40K, limit animation to under 15 seconds, create an easy-to-click outgoing link, and underline the link so it stands out.

Said Digitas' Williams: "You want to create an in-page experience as much as possible. Just having a widget that links to your [home] page, that's a glorified link. No one's going to buy it."

from: http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628832

Labels: Widgets

Kraft Recipe Widget - Idea for Chow

http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/media/RecipeWidget.htm

Labels: Widgets

Nissan Live Traffic Google Gadget

http://tinyurl.com/2s4922

Labels: Widgets

Widget Idea for UrbanBaby

Labels: Widgets

Dart Widget - Widget Advertising is Hot

Labels: Widgets

CBS Local Ad Network

CBS Local Ad Network, created by syndicating CBS local news content to local bloggers and social media Web sites. In exchange for publishing the CBS news widgets and links to local CBS video and text news, local sites receive a portion of the ad revenue sold by the CBS stations.

More: http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003726377

Labels: Widgets

Widget Analytics

http://widgetanalytics.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/widget-analytics-social-network-stats-versus-my-widget-platform/

Labels: Widgets

Scion Widget Ad on Gamespot

check it out: http://demos.interpolls.com/demos/scion/gamespotwid.html
produced by Interpolls.
We even got a bit of press for running it:
http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628477

Labels: Widgets

Clearspring and Gigya on Why widgets are worth watching

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/18254.asp

Labels: Widgets

To make Widgets Successful

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/18419.asp

Policing:
....many of the successful widget platforms provide feedback mechanisms where the community at large can comment and vote on widgets, such that the crummy ones get buried and the great ones are given top billing. They also build in reporting mechanisms so that bugs or malicious code can be quickly discovered and removed.
Without a system for self-policing, widget platforms are doomed to repeat many of the same mistakes as email.

Standards
Bill of Rights that contains some basics, such as the notion that when a user tells a widget to uninstall itself, the widget should do so. Another might state that widgets can't use contact information without permission. Much like email, widgets could soon become things people want to protect themselves from, rather than engage with.

Prioritizing messaging above utility
The best widgets extend utility to the people that install them. Messaging is a secondary concern, if a concern at all. If marketers fail to realize this, we could flood widget directories with thousands of useless widgets, killing off the widget ecosystem.

Crummy success metrics
Viral pass-along can be one of the measures that marketers look at in order to gauge the health of the campaign, but if that metric is overemphasized, designers will start designing to fulfill on the metric, delivering "success" at the expense of compelling utility. No tricks to get users to send it along!

Labels: Widgets

eMarketer numbers on Widgets ad spending

http://www.emarketer.com/Reports/All/Emarketer_2000368.aspx?src=report1_home

Labels: Widgets

BRIDGET - Gigya Test

ImageChef.com - Custom comment codes for MySpace, Hi5, Friendster and more

Labels: Widgets

NetShelter Network and Widgets

NetShelter has mostly aggregated smaller, techie-oriented sites with names like PhoneScoop, Geek.com, and GamersHell.com. These fall into five broader categories covering mobile, games, developers, IT and consumer electronics.

NetShelter already ranks as the second most-trafficked technology news property online behind Cnet, with about 26 million unique visitors as of December, according to comScore.

NetShelter is also tapping into another Web marketing trend by unveiling a widget-based campaign. The Widget Base platform will let publishers and advertisers create microsites housing online stores, resource centers or online communities. The widgets will be promoted via branded buttons and banners throughout the network.

More:
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=76202&Nid=39222&p=241154

Labels: Widgets

AOL Buys Widget Tech Firm

AOL acquired widget technology company Goowy Media with plans to deploy widgets that feature programming, content, applications, and ads. Special widget-based ads will permeate AOL's ad network, and allow users to take the message to other sites.

San Diego, Calif.-based Goowy Media is a widget creation company; its offerings include a tool to track and report where widgets appear, and how Web users interact with these small applications. Metrics such as which widgets get picked up by users from a particular social network, and how long users remain engaged with a particular widget are reported by the tool.

As part of the products division, Goowy will work closely with Platform A as the widget ad offering becomes available. The group will be responsible for sales of widget ads. "It'll be another tool that Platform A will be able to use as part of its toolbox or arsenal of ad solutions," said David Liu, SVP of social media, messaging, and homepages at AOL. "It offers different types of characteristics for ad buyers." AOL's Flash chat property Userplane, was also mentioned by Liu as a potential unit for selling ad inventory, and providing working with Goowy.

More: http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628333

Labels: Widgets

MySpace To Get Widgets

http://www.adotas.com/2008/01/myspace-to-get-widgets/

Labels: Widgets

Widget posting instructions

http://www.adaptiveblue.com/install_smartlinks.html

Labels: Widgets

Smart Widget Ads for Publishers "WidgetBucks"

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=74499

WidgetBucks features pay-per-click shopping widgets that help our customers make money fast. They instantly display the most popular products based on buying trends of 100 million shoppers. Thus they are
highly engaging, which means instant dollars for our customers. Our widgets see $3-$6 CPM — pretty good compared to traditional ad networks that deliver less than $2 CPM

Since Mpire launched the WidgetBucks network in October 2007, some 40,000 publishers have signed on--and the company recently hit the 1.5 billion monthly impression mark.
The network primarily features bloggers and other long-tail publishers, Mpire is scaling the tech to handle continuously pumping impressions out across entire blog platforms and larger media outlets.

They tailor to publishers and bloggers to get a widget that is an ad after sign-up. The widget displays relevant content from their advertiers (e.g. Walmart's digial camera offerings on Camera blog). Publisher and Blogger gets paid when users click on ad Widget. They also offer a Referral program.

Labels: Widgets

Advertising.com and Facebook apps

Advertising.com has jumped into the widget advertising pool with a program that allows Facebook application developers to earn ad revenue.
The Baltimore company's new "WIDGNET" program enables creators of Facebook widgets to join Advertising.com's ad network, said Joel Fisher, initiative lead with the company's new product development group.
Facebook's decision this year to open its platform to widget developers not only sparked a tidal wave of new applications but also a number of efforts to help the creators monetize those apps. Earlier this week, for example, Federated Media announced a couple of Facebook application deals with advertisers, including one between HP and Grafitti Wall.

more: http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3627798

Labels: Widgets

Consumer Widget Vendors

Clearspring with Ad Network
Gigya with Ad Network
WidgetBox
SpringWidgets
SimpleSpark
Netvibes wants to have ad network by end of Q1 08, their new product is called Ginger
Newsgator

Labels: Widgets

Newsweek Widget

Its a pretty straightforward top stories unit, but it allows you to use the slider to extend the range, you can toggle between most viewed and most emailed, and the "clip this feature" allow you to embed it on social networking sites ( I like the iPhone UI for this feature). Has a date and time stamp.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/80897/page/2

Labels: Widgets

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