Sexy Widget

Widgetbox Blidgets – A Review

Widget service provider Widgetbox (site, review) has just launched Blidgets – a tool that lets publishers convert RSS feeds into Flash widgets.

Widgetbox joins SpringWidgets and MuseStorm as providers of Flash RSS widgets, along with start pages like YourMinis and PageFlakes.

Converting your RSS feed into a widget with Widgetbox has a couple of advantages.  For example, the Blidget tool makes it easy to add an image to your widget, which can be helpful for branding or presentation purposes.  Publishing a widget through Widgetbox also signs you up for Widgetbox’s free stats package which tracks page views by date and page views by domain.  Finally, there’s a distribution aspect as well.  Publishing with Widgetbox automatically drops you into Widgetbox’s widget gallery, which in my opinion, is the most polished and well presented widget directory out there.

I had no problems finding the Blidget tool, which is located prominently on the Widgetbox home page.  One very minor point that I appreciated – although I wasn’t logged in when I launched the tool, it didn’t direct me immediately to the login page.  It let me build my widget, and THEN allowed me to login.  Little things like this can make a big difference in adoption.

The configuration tool is user friendly and intuitive.  One neat, albeit minor, aspect that I hadn’t seen before was the way in which widget dimensions are chosen.  Instead of asking users to choose dimensions in pixels or percentages, Widgetbox gives two visual displays – one wide, and once narrow.  The narrow one is clearly for a sidebar, and the wide one is for a post or a social network.  It seems to me that widget newbies would much prefer this method, than being forced to choose a pixel width and height.  (note: The downside of this simplicity is that I was unable to reduce the wide widget to fit in the body of this post, even by adjusting the widths in the embed and object codes)

The other notable piece of the configuration tool is the Blidget’s use of images.  The Blidget tool sucks all of the images from your blog URL, and lets you select which (if any) of the images that you would like to display at the top of your widget.  It would have been nice to select an alignment for the image, but I understand the trade off between simplicity and functionality.

There were two things that I struggled with.  First, I tried to set up two different versions of the same widget for two different destinations – one for a sidebar, and one for a post.  Because Widgetbox is a widget management system, making a change to my widget republished the widget in all of its environments.  I guess the way around this would be to build two different widgets, e.g. LOTR- sidebar and LOTR – wide.

The second thing – and this is a minor point – is that the image that you select to accompany your widget has a default click through of the main URL of the RSS feed’s source.  This makes sense in general, but not when you want your image to be an RSS subscribe icon (see the widget in the right sidebar).  Clicking the RSS icon in this widget does not subscribe you to the blog – it takes you to the blog’s home page.  At a minimum, an override field should be provided so that the publisher controls where the image points to.

One final thing that sort of surprised me is the lack of a “grab this widget” icon at the bottom of the widget (although Widgetbox does provide "Get My Widget" buttons that bloggers can put on their blog).  As MuseStorm showed us, this doesn’t have to trigger in widget code – it could point back to the Widgetbox’s configuration tool.  I find this absence a bit problematic, as widget to widget distribution is a big deal.  I don’t know if this is an oversight on Widgetbox’s part, or if it’s a calculated move to prioritize Widgetbox Gallery distribution over widget to widget distribution.

Overall, this is a neat little tool.  I like the design options, I like the creative use of images, and I like the associated stats and automatic placement in the Widgetbox Gallery. 

So should publishers turn to MuseStorm or Widgetbox to convert their RSS feeds?  It’s too early to tell.  In their current iterations, there are pluses and minuses to both.  I like Widgetbox’s free analytics and image powered branding potential.  I like MuseStorm’s ‘grab this widget” functionality and partner driven distribution model.  At the end of the day, given that both offer nice interfaces and stats packages, distribution is going to tip the balance.  As a publisher, I’m going to give first dibs on my widget business to the platform that can put my widget in front of the most consumers.

For more on Widgetbox, see Mashable.

SplashCast Media Widget – A Review

SplashCast has just launched an ambitious service that lets you broadcast content channels (made up of video, RSS feeds, text, music, photos, etc.) to a Flash widget that can be embedded on blogs or profile pages.  Modifying a content channel via your SplashCast control panel updates that channel wherever it appears around the Web.

Functionality wise, the SplashCast widget is not all that different from the Box.net widget.  Both services allow you to share various types of media via a widget. 

Marketing wise, however, the two services very different.  While Box.net is about file storage with file sharing as an added bonus, SplashCast is all about creating full on media shows.  With SplashCast, you can do neat things like set the transition time between media types, choose between automatic playback and user initiated playback, and upload background music.

To test the service, I built a show called “Widget Primer.”  I created three text files related to various widget resources, and embedded a video of Engadget’s Peter Rojas talking about 2007 as the year of the widget.  You can check out this show here:

One disappointing aspect was that I had to choose between including a single RSS feed OR a combination of text, photo, audio, and video files.  This prevented me from including a snapshot of Sexy Widget headlines as one of the views on my SplashCast.  Ideally, I would have wanted a couple of text files, a video file, AND an RSS feed.

The SplashCast control panel is all Flash, which takes a little getting used do.  Where they do a very nice job is in providing various options for each media type: for example, for videos, you are able to upload a video, grab a video from YouTube, or record your own video on the spot using a Web cam.  There is also some slick drag and drop functionality that allows you to set the order of your various media files.

One other thing to note from a widget blocking and tackling perspective: SplashCast does a nice job enabling new sign-ups and widget grabbing within the body of the widget.  Try it yourself by clicking "get SplashCast" in the widget above.  You can sign up for SplashCast and subscribe to the Widget Primer show without leaving the page.

 

Overall, SplashCast is a pretty powerful tool.  It is now possible to broadcast multiple media types in a single footprint, which is a real benefit for folks who have only limited sidebar real estate to work with.  I do wish these guys would spring for SplashCast.com so I don’t have to look at that stupid parked page again :)

For more on Splashcast, see TechCrunch.  You can leave your own review of the Splashcast widget here.  Update: Josh at Webware has a nice write-up as well.

Widgets: 25 Things to Think About

Yahoo! asked me to write a guest post about widgets for the Yahoo! Publisher Network blog a while back, and that post just went live today.

I took a shot at coming up with 25 things that you should think about when coming up with your site's widget strategy.  Some of it may be a little basic for readers of Sexy Widget, but hopefully it's worth a read anyway.

Note: If I had written the post today, I would have included Box.net as a favorite widget, and would have listed "Consider having your Flash widget rotate content automatically" as a 26th point.

Checking in on MuseStorm

MuseStorm is an Israel-based widget service provider that I’ve been keeping an eye for a while (see mentions here and here) that has been making good progress.  They recently launched a service that makes it easy to convert any RSS feed into a slick, Flash widget. 

Besides the ease of publishing, widgetizing your content with MuseStorm has other benefits.  Widgets configured with MuseStorm come equipped with MuseStorm’s analytics package.  This stats package breaks down impressions by date, impressions by geo (not working yet), and impressions by the following social networks (Piczo, Freewebs, MySpace, Multiply, Xanga, hi5, Tagworld, and Friendster).  Blog properties such as Blogger and Typepad are not yet included in the breakdown.  The stats package is free for the first 60 days, and then costs $4 per feed, per month after that.

There’s also a distribution piece in the works that will allow one click adds of a newly configured widget to PageFlakes, Freewebs, Snipperoo, Netvibes, and Weebly.

The MuseStorm widget configuration tool is excellent.  In addition to providing a thorough list of formatting options for dimensions, colors, fonts, widget icon, etc., you can also choose from two presentation options – a list based widget, or one that automatically rotates through individual posts from your feed.  Here are two examples of the same feed (RateItAll’s list of Best Presidents), with two different MuseStorm configurations.

Each widget comes equipped with a little flashbulb icon in the top right hand corner which when clicked, displays a description of the widget (which you submit during the configuration process).  There’s also a prominent “Add to your Website” button at the bottom of every MuseStorm widget that points directly to the MuseStorm configuration tool for the widget.  The title of the widget points back to a URL of the site providing the feed.

So why would a publisher want to build their widgets with MuseStorm?  I think there are a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, the MuseStorm configuration tool allows faster, easier, and probably better widget publishing than what most publishers could do on their own.  And of course the quality of the MuseStorm widget configuration tool does not just benefit the original widget publisher – it also benefits any end users who try to grab a widget for their own site.

Also, the fact that MuseStorm widgets are powered by RSS is important.  Most sites have already done the work to enable RSS feeds for their site’s content.  As opposed to treating widget publishing like a whole new game, MuseStorm makes it an easy, incremental jump to go from RSS feed to Flash widget.

It’s also significant that there’s no onerous MuseStorm branding on the widget.  Publishers don’t have to trade brand exposure for easy publishing – through the widget icon and the URL of the title, the brand of the widget publisher is prioritized over MuseStorm’s own brand.  The stats package is also an interesting hook, especially once they add blog coverage.  I’m not, however, convinced that folks will pay for widget stats.  People are used to getting that for free, and there are enough free tools available (Technorati, Yahoo! Site Explorer, etc.) to get a rough idea of how your widget is propagating.

The piece that I’m most excited about as a widget publisher is the distribution aspect.  It’s a daunting task to have to build a separate widget for each of the widget aggregators – if MuseStorm can succeed with its goal of one click distribution, that will be a big deal.

MuseStorm’s CEO Ori Soen tells me that there’s an SDK in the works that will allow publishers more flexibility in creating custom widgets.  I’m interested to see how this turns out – will it allow customizations like sign-ins and sign-ups within the body of the widget?  Will it allow batch publishing of widgets?  Could the widget configuration tool be hosted on the publisher’s site?

I see this ability provide customization options as the biggest hurdle for MuseStorm to overcome to become a preferred widget publishing and management tool.  One size fits all works up to a point, but as widgets start to become more sophisticated, customization becomes more important.

The other hesitancy that I would have as a publisher in pushing my content out through the MuseStorm widget is the absence of a crawlable link to my site.  I don’t care what Jason Calacanis says – SEO is critically important to a large number of start-ups, and having a successful widget without a crawlable backlink means you’re leaving traffic on the table.

I’m very impressed with what MuseStorm has accomplished to date.  I’ll be watching closely to see how the distribution tool shapes up, if they can add blogging properties to the analytics tool, and what kind of flexibility is provided by the SDK.

Shelfari Widget – A Review

Shelfari is a social network built around books – members can share book titles in their personal collection, and meet people who have the same books.  The Shelfari widget is a means of displaying your “shelf” of book titles on your blog or social networking page.

I had been meaning to check out the Shelfari widget for a while, mostly because intuitively it makes a lot of sense.  Last.FM and iLike have both built great widgets around the consumption of music.  Why shouldn’t somebody be able to build one around the consumption of books?

The first thing I noticed about Shelfari is its design.  It’s strikingly clean and appealing.  Ajax is used for things like rating and tagging, and the whole thing just works.

I added a few titles to my shelf, and had no problem finding them in Shelfari’s database.  I then looked for a way to build my widget, with no success.   I looked in the main navigation areas of the site, and checked the FAQs.  Still nothing.  A search on Google pointed me to a write-up which told me to look for an “add to my blog” button.  Thus enlightened, I was able to find the widget button and trigger the widget configuration tool.

The Shelfari widget configuration tool is one of the slickest that I’ve seen.  It features a “basic” tab which allows you to select the widget’s destination, layout, and dimensions.  There’s also an “advanced” tab that provides further customization options.  Shelfari is able to communicate a ton of customization options without confusing the user.  There’s also a nice Ajax preview tool which shows you exactly what your widget will look like.

As you can see from my right sidebar, the front end of the widget is visually striking.  Viewers are able to toggle through the entire shelf of books, and the Flash format is really snazzy here.  Running your cursor over the each book image displays three links: one to read reviews, one to buy the book on Amazon, and one to view more info on the book.  The Amazon link is an affiliate link, which I assume represents Shelfari’s primary revenue model.  I didn’t see any mention of revenue sharing with the user.

So what are the strengths of this widget?  Displaying the books that one chooses to read is a powerful form of self-expression.  Just as folks seem to like to tell the world what music they are listening to, there is no reason to think that they wouldn’t want to do the same with books. 

I also think that the Shelfari widget is well-executed.  Except for my inability to find the widget configuration tool (which may be more of a user error than any design problem), the process was very easy, and the widget looks sharp in my sidebar.

Shelfari is, however, facing a couple of significant challenges.  All I have to do to keep my iLike widget loaded with fresh, self-expressive content is to listen to music.  Unfortunately, with Shelfari, my completion of a book doesn’t automatically add it to my shelf.  I have to log in, search for the book title, and explicitly add it to my shelf.  This is a big deal, and there’s really nothing that Shelfari can do about it.

To use my personal case as an example, I love to read, I love social media sites, and I love widgets.  But I’m still not sure if I’m going to be able to find the time to launch a whole new identity on Shelfari.  There’s a lot of neat destination services out there battling for a finite number of users.  It’s going to be tough for Shelfari to reach critical mass without closing a big bizdev deal or two.

Another challenge is the personal nature of the widget.  Because every Shelfari widget is highly customized to the user, this is not a widget that folks are going to grab and put on their own site.  They will have to see it, understand it, open up a new browser, join Shelfari, create their own shelf, build the widget, and add it to their own page.

Before I saw Box.net’s widget, I didn’t think it was possible to manage this entire process within the body of the widget.  Now I do think it’s possible, and strongly recommend to Shelfari that they explore the possibility of in-widget sign up and configuration.  There’s no reason that Shelfari couldn’t provide a “add this book to my shelf” option just like Box.net provides a “share in my box widget” option for each individual file, which triggers the join and configuration process.

As it stands today, Shelfari’s widget is primarily a one way widget.  It’s a neat tool for existing Shelfari users to project their Shelfari identities to the edge, but it’s not a tool that is going to drive significant levels of new sign ups.  My personal opinion is that the Shelfari widget needs to evolve from being a branding and affiliate revenue driver, to a self sufficient new registration capture tool.

The way to do this is to make each individual book title a hook into a new sign-up, that can be performed within the body of the widget.  I would expect this change to have a significant impact on the number of new sign ups that this widget generates.

If they can pull this tweak off, I believe that they have a decent chance to overcome the challenges related to being one of many explicit data dependent social networks.

See more about Shelfari on Widgets Lab,  Mashable and TechCrunch.

Widgets and Super Bowl Ads

Has the viral power of widgets increased or decreased the value of a Super Bowl ad? 

The arugment for why the value of a Super Bowl ad has gone up goes something like this:

It used to be that buying a Super Bowl ad meant exposing your advertising message to a massive audience in one thirty or sixty second block.  If your ad was good, people might talk about it at the water cooler the next day, and maybe tell their friends about it.  Within a few weeks, all would most likely be forgotten.

In recent years, companies such as web host Go Daddy have been able to extend their Super Bowl bounce by making their ads available on their own site.  So instead of just talking about the ad, people could pass the link to the Go Daddy site on to their friends, or find it via Google. 
 

Those who believe that widgets are adding value to Super Bowl ads probably think that 2007 is going to rewrite the book on the value of a (good) Super Bowl ad.  It's conceivable that the best ads are going to propagate like no commercial message we've ever seen before.  Every advertiser will have their ad available on YouTube minutes after they show up on TV, and publishers of all kinds will make these clips available to their audiences.  Widgets will empower a virtual army of web publishers - bloggers, MySpacers, online communities - to try and tap into the Super Bowl hype, in the process propagating the cleverest and most controversial ad messages.  By lengthening and exaggerating the impact of buying a Super Bowl ad, widgets can be seen as significantly improving the ROI of a Super Bowl spend.

But there's also another school of thought on this.  If you believe in the Snowball Effect, advertisers shouldn't have to dish out the dough for a Super Bowl ad for this chance to propagate their message.  For example, despite the bizarre efforts of the Anheuser-Busch legal team, a search for "Real Men of Genius" shows how a clever ad message can spread around the Web.  This is a campaign that was launched by a few radio spots - hardly the investment of a Super Bowl ad.

So which is it?  Is 2007 the best year to buy a Super Bowl ad or the worst year, all other things being equal?  I guess I tend to lean towards it being a great year.  Snowballs need to start somewhere, and it seems to me that a Super Bowl launch gives your commercial message a better chance to blow up than only relying on word of mouth.

The other point here is that Super Bowl ads are considered more than ads - they've achieved the advertising utopia of being considered part of the content, and in some cases, the primary content.  Commercial messages in other settings just don't have that same legitimacy.  By spending the money to put your message on during the Super Bowl, you are buying the right to be part of the show.

There was a bizarre meme floating around Silicon Valley for a while among some Web 2.0 fundamentalist VCs that said "if you have to advertise, you're doing something wrong."  I thought it was pretty foolish to throw out 100 years of marketing learning just because a handful of companies got very, very big without advertising.

What's not foolish is to enhance your commercial message by making sure it harnesses all of the social media tools available - like getting it up on YouTube.  It will be interesting to see if the TV networks can cash in on the widget-enabled value add of these commercial messages by raising their prices.   

A Migration to Private Widgets?

Timothy Post of Flying Seeds left a fantastic comment on A VC the other day that I think raises some interesting points.  He sees widgets to date as being fueled by a desire for self expression.  Moving forward, he expects widgets to take more private, more utilitarian forms.  Specifically, he envisions each widget having its own url and being called to mobile devices as needed.  Here's what he has to say:

Public vs Private widgets.

Self-expression vs. Self-organization.

I'd like to make a distinction between the current state of the widgetsphere and how I believe it might evolve.

Currently, widgets (snippets of embed code which live on host websites, blogs, MySpace pages, etc) pull data from other third party web services and are generally forms of self-expression.

People, like Fred, paste widgets onto their websites as a way of sharing their interests, tastes, identities, etc. This is fine but I think what we are witnessing, and Fred's blog post here is an inflection point, is a point of diminishing returns.

The value of these public widgets (self-expression) is losing some of its sex appeal and novelty. It's getting boring.

What's the next step for widgets? I would argue that private widgets which serve as mini-data containers or short-form websites to help us manage and organize the overwhelming amount of data who have all accumulated in our personal lives by living in this modern world of ours.

He goes on to provide one vision for how this evolution could happen:

Widgets needs to be freed from websites and go mobile. Widgets are the perfect form factor to go mobile with Fred and family. As I have written about recently on my blog Flyingseeds.com, mobile widgets on the new iPhone and other internet connected cell phones will be the platform of choice 12 months out.

I actually think that the current trend of pasting widget embed code on internet websites will prove a distraction rather than the end game.

Widgets are really "short-form" websites. Why bother to go to your American Airlines Admirals Club account page on the internet when you could simply open a widget created by the Admirals Club.

The missing piece in the evolution is a web service which offers an "address book" for all of these personalized mobile widgetcards. Fred's post proves that a blog is not the ideal storage container for widgets.

So while we are still thinking through the future of widgets, let's keep thinking outside of the "widgetbox" and not get stuck thinking of widgets as only little boxes of self-expression which live on html pages.

Timothy writes more on this subject in his post entitled Free Range Widgets.

While I'm not sure if the self-expression aspect of widgets is ever going to go away, I do find his vision of private, mobile widgets pretty intriguing.  For example, would it be useful for me to be able to pull a box.net file storage widget to my PDA to grab a song, a photo, or a file?  Absolutely.

Because the widget space is so new, not many folks have taken a shot at predicting how it will evolve - most of us are still grappling with figuring out exactly what's going on now.  I'm looking forward to reading more from Flying Seeds as Timothy continues to flesh this out.

Box.net File Sharing Widget – A Review

I have a new favorite widget.  The Box.net file sharing widget allows you to share files (photos, mp3 files, presentations, etc.) via any page that accepts Flash embeds.

For example, as you can see in the right hand column, I am sharing a gorgeous photo that my friend took of the Golden Gate Bridge, a PowerPoint presentation about widgets that I gave last year at Webmasterworld’s Pubcon, and a track from the band Smoosh. 

So why is this widget so cool?  Well, it’s a music player.  It’s a photo sharing tool.  It’s a way to distribute large files.  In other words, it’s just an incredibly useful tool with numerous applications.

Beyond its utility, there are a couple of other things to note.

I have not seen a widget that does a better job of enabling new sign-ups (and logins) through the body of the widget.  To date, services that require registration have had a real hard time making effective use of widgets.  Opening up a new browser window and forcing someone to join or sign in is just so ….. clunky.  It sort of defeats the whole point of being a distributed service.

Box.net does an extremely elegant job of making new sign ups fast, easy, and painless – all within the body of the widget.  Anybody who has been grappling with how to reconcile forced registrations with widgets should definitely take a few minutes to try out Box.net’s solution.  You might learn something – I know that I did.

So what are the implications of this?  Let’s say that I’m reading a blog and there’s a music track that I like being shared via a Box.net widget.  Without ever leaving the blog, I can grab the music track, join Box.net, and set up my own Box.net widget pre-loaded with that music track.  And of course, it doesn’t have to be a music track.  It could be a photo, a presentation, a whitepaper.  It’s easy to imagine Box.net enabling a rapid spread of files around the Web.

The other thing that I love about this widget is how it fits into Box.net’s business model.  Box.net makes money by charging folks for file storage.  They give you up to 1GB of file storage for free, and up to 5GB for $4.99 per month.  What the widget does is to sign up people for the free trial version of the service, all within the user experience of the widget publisher site. 

By providing a one click “Share in my Box” functionality, Box.net is effectively leveraging the content of the widget publisher to propagate its widgets - and more importantly, sell its file storage service.  The beauty is that folks don’t even know they’re signing up for a free trial of a file storage service – they are just grabbing a piece of media that they like for their blog.  It’s brilliant.  From a business model perspective, it’s far more intuitive than say, YouTube’s widget strategy.

So while the debate continues about whether widgets can ever make money, Box.net has quietly built a widget that will drive qualified lead after qualified lead to their revenue engine. 

This is a ground breaking widget.  It’s so cool I’m not even going to point out the missed opportunity of not having a “File Storage at Box.net” link below the Flash.

Widget Bashing on Valleywag

Nick Denton over at Valleywag has just posted a couple of reasons why he thinks that widgets are more hype than substance.  His primary arguments are:

- Widgets are clutter
- Widgets slow the page down
- There's no business model

I don't really disagree with any of these points.  As any reader of Sexy Widget can attest, too many widgets DO clutter things up and slow the page down. 

But I don't think these failings will be enough to slow the widget momentum.

Widgets are clutter, but it's my clutter, dammit.  They give me the power to take my favorite web services with me in a to go bag, and call them up whenever and wherever I want them.

If there is any enduring take-away from this whole social media / web 2.0 thing is that folks like being in control of their online experience.  Widgets represent the next phase of this ceding of control to the user - and this time, the user's power spans across the boundaries of individual domains.

I also think this pressure to define a business model for widgets is a little unfair.  When I buy text link ads via Google AdWords, I'm not expecting the ad itself to make me money.  In fact, I'm PAYING for the right to have my custom AdWords widget to show up on the search results page.  Why do I pay?  I pay because I believe that the resulting traffic will support my business model.

So why are we demanding that the widget itself make money?  Isn't enough that the widget build your brand, drive you traffic, and improve your organic search rankings?  And for free?

I dunno... I guess I'm all for a healthy dose of skepticism, but let's make sure that we not forget about what widgets do bring to the table: more freedom, control, and power for users, and the ability for any web site - no matter how small or bootstrapped - to see their message, content, and brand spread like wildfire around the web.   

Real Men of Genius: Mr. Don't Distribute My Ads Or I'll Put You In Jail

I'm sure many of you have heard the Bud Light "Real Men of Genius" ad campaign.  The ads feature a serious sounding announcer and a cheesy background singer saluting some bizarre character - here's one of my favorites: Mr. Really Big Pet Snake Owner.

Anyway, there are something like 79 authorized versions of these commercials - and most of them are really, really clever.  It's a fantastic marketing campaign, with obviously, huge, viral potential.

I  went in search of a Real Men of Genius widget so I could set up a RateItAll ratings list of the top Real Men of Genius ads - what I found was that Bud Light had been systematically harassing the sites distributing these MP3 Files, and demanding that their content be removed.  One of the legal notices can be read here.

I try to picture myself in Bud Light's shoes.  They create a clever ad campaign for which they spend real dollars for radio distribution.  The campaign turns out to be so clever that folks what to give it Internet airplay for free.  Bud Light's reaction is to threaten legal action against the free distributors, but continue to pay for distribution... my goodness.

Granted, this particular conflict was from 2005.  Perhaps Bud Light has lightened its stance a bit, and is starting to embrace, rather than harass, those want to distribute their advertising messages.

But where are the Real Men of Genius widgets?  These things would spread like wild fire.  Hooman, if you're listening, why not give Anheuser-Busch a call and help them get with the program?  Or better yet, somebody should just drop these MP3 Files into an audio widget, and put their own backlink at the bottom.  The backlink love would no doubt push the publisher of this widget to the top of the SERPS for whatever anchor text they chose to use. 

In my opinion, AB's (no doubt costly) attempt to stifle the proliferation of their own advertising message ranks as one of the more graphic examples of "not getting it" that I have ever seen.  It makes me want to start a brewery.