Sexy Widget

SpringWidgets Expands Functionality

The Fox owned SpringWidgets RSS reader, which we reviewed way back in November 2006, has expanded its functionality to include MP3 and video playback.  Stickiwidgets has the scoop.

Snipperoo has a revamped blog directory

Looking for widget distribution?  Make sure to include your widget in Snipperoo's new and improved widget directory.

New features include:

• Additional info for each widget
• Images / Screenshots
• Widget rating and reviews
• Claim your widget functionality that allows you to manage your listings
• Widget code fields
• Lists of usable platforms
• Widget tagging
• Widget search

StumbleUpon Facebook App

I’ve been a big fan of StumbleUpon for a long time.  They’re one of the first consumer facing online services to ride a distributed strategy – via a download no less – to a huge user base and a large exit.

Because of this success, I’ve always considered StumbleUpon one of the real authorities in distributed business strategy, and I’ve been eagerly looking forward to how they would handle the Facebook dilemma.

Would they go the iLike / Flixster route and build a self contained app that provided full functionality within the Facebook domain?  Or would they go the Upcoming route and build something that spanned both properties?

Well, now we have our answer.  The StumbleUpon Facebook App spans both properties, with the website recommendation output happening within Facebook, but the reviewing and profile browsing happening on StumbleUpon.

The key is in the content hubs.  While iLike has mirrored every band listing on Facebook so the user never has to go over to iLike.com, StumbleUpon directs Facebook users over to Stumbleupon to access a website’s review and info page.

This is a critical difference from both a user experience and monetization perspective.

There’s one other interesting thing to note about the Facebook App.  Once you’ve synched your Stumbleupon and Facebook accounts, the StumbleUpon app aggregates the site recommendations of both your Facebook friends and StumbleUpon friends on Facebook.  Flixster may do this as well (I couldn’t confirm this as I don’t have any friends on Flixster), but iLike does not.

Again, there are so many variables at play here, it’s hard to say which will turn out to be the best strategy.

My gut tells me that eventually Facebook is going to have to provide a more tangible benefit to app developers than the ego rush of appearing on the hottest apps pages.  Google’s recent announcement to provide grants and funding for developers of successful gadgets would seem to indicate that Google agrees with me.

Until those tangible benefits are announced, I think StumbleUpon and Upcoming are doing the right thing by keeping their destination sites in the user experience.

July 11: Widgetcon and SF New Tech

Widgetcon is shaping up to be a pretty good show.  Speakers include some of my favorite writers on the subject of widgets like Hooman, Ivan, Jeremy Liew, and Steve Rubel.  The full list of speakers can be found here.

Sadly, I'm going to miss the event. 

On the same day as Widgetcon, I will be at SF New Tech, publicly launching RateItAll's distributed rating and community widget.  Guy Kawaski will be there as well to talk about Truemors.  Also presenting is the enteraining Blabberize (I'll be writing up this Monty Python-esque widget up when their servers stabilize), AdPerk, and collaboration tool JuggleMyStuff.

Speaking of Implicit Widgets: Here Comes Spotplex

The other day I was lamenting the fact that we hadn’t seen much new innovation recently with widgets that are powered by implicit data.

Enter Spotplex.

The easiest way to think about Spotplex is as an implicit powered, distributed Digg.  Instead of the crowds voting on interesting content by clicking a button, with Spotplex, they vote with their eyeballs – that is to say, users vote implicitly by what they choose to read.

The key to the Spotplex service lies in its analytics driven widget.  The Spotplex widget collects page load data from blogs, and sends these figures back to Spotplex home base, where hottest articles are aggregated across a number of categories such as Tech, Business, Sports, etc.

So why would a blogger choose to install the Spotplex widget?  Well, there are a couple of reasons.  Initially, the main draw is that the Spotplex widget displays which of your posts are drawing the most interest within a set time period.  You can see the widget in action in the left sidebar of this blog.

Unlike the Criteo auto roll widget which helps your readers discover similar content on other blogs, the Spotplex widget helps your readers discover interesting content on your blog.

While this functionality might be enough to earn some blog real estate for the Spotplex widget, there’s another compelling reason that bloggers might want to take this widget for a whirl.

Traffic.

By adding the Spotplex widget to your blog, your blog’s posts get put into circulation on the Spotplex destination site, and can earn additional exposure for your blog.

This is a nice example of the hub and spoke and strategy that I’ve discussed in previous posts where the destination site and the widget network are working in concert to provide value to the widget host, thus providing a reason for blog publishers to grant your widget real estate.

I really like this widget.  I get it.  I understand the value for my blog.  And I appreciate the potential future benefit of driving additional traffic to my blog via the Spotplex destination site.

And because it’s powered by implicit data, nobody has to do anything that they weren’t doing anyway for the service to work.

For more, see Mashable and Computer World.

The Upcoming.org Facebook App: Synching Costs with Revenue

There’s been quite a bit of discussion recently around trying to understand what a successful Facebook App means for the publisher.

Inside Facebook shares the story of the Where I’ve Been app whose popularity is leaving its developer trying to figure out what to do now, in the face of escalating costs and zero revenue.

Brad Feld acknowledges the brilliance of the Facebook platform, but questions what value there is for the publisher.

However, as far as I can tell, none of these Facebook apps developers are deriving any real benefits (if you are a Facebook apps developer and ARE deriving a tangible benefit, other than customer acquisition within the Facebook infrastructure, please weigh in.)  In addition, Facebook has shifted all of the infrastructure costs to these apps developers, creating the "I have 250,000 users, now what?” problem.

Andrew Chen, an expert in advertising campaigns on social networks, is even more specific in his warning to application publishers:

It’s unclear how much a Facebook app user is worth, compared to a user on your destination site. On a destination site, you can probably get a $0.50-1 CPM, whereas the CTRs and conversion rates on Facebooks apps imply a much lower CPM. Facebook app users are potentially worth about 1% of what users on your website are worth in my view, but the opportunity is to make it up in bulk.

And this blog goes through a long, rambling discussion of why a Facebook app user is not as valuable as a site user.

So what’s a Facebook app publisher to do?  One approach would be to follow the model used by Yahoo owned event site Upcoming.org and build an app that spans Facebook and the home base site.

Here’s what I mean.  Many of the most popular Facebook apps exist wholly on Facebook.  For example, despite the fact that services like Flixster and iLike have large destination site communities, they have chosen to build apps that can exist on a standalone basis within the Facebook community.  Zero click through to the home base site is required for users to enjoy these services.

From a user perspective (and from a Facebook perspective), there’s a lot of value in this approach.  The Flixster and iLike apps are seamless extensions of the Facebook experience.  There’s no bouncing back and forth between domains, and no confusion for the user.  Perhaps the user doesn’t even realize they are using third party apps.

But for the reasons laid out by Brad and Andrew above, this sort of app may not be sustainable for the (bootstrapping) app developer. (note: I expect that affiliate supported business models will do better within the Facebook environment than ad supported business models).

What Upcoming has done is to build its application in such a way that users need to bounce back and forth between Facebook and Upcoming.org to use it.  While iLike and Flixster created Facebook hosted pages for all of its content hubs (band pages, movie pages), Upcoming kept its core content hub (the event page) on Upcoming.org.  What this means is that to actually sign up to attend an event, you need to do it on Upcoming.org.  Clicking an event link on Facebook takes you to an Upcoming hosted page.  Activity that occurs on Upcoming is synched with the user’s Facebook account.

This approach isn’t as elegant from a user experience perspective, but it’s MUCH more sustainable from a business perspective as Upcoming can monetize its Facebook traffic back at home base.  Additionally, it preserves a single community of Upcoming users across Upcoming and Facebook, as opposed to the parallel communities managed by Flixster and iLike.

However, it’s worth noting that at the time of this post, the Upcoming app has 430 or so users, while Flixster and iLike are in the millions.  Whether this is due to a later start, less aggressive viral marketing, or a clunkier user experience remains to be seen.

So who has the right model?  Flixster and iLike with their parallel communities, native Facebook apps, and explosive growth (of both users and costs), or Upcoming with its synched community, clunkier user experience, but clear path to Facebook generated revenue?

It’s way, way too early to tell.  Facebook may decide to help native app providers monetize via advertising as Brad Feld suggests, or charge a CPC toll to apps that link out excessively as Andrew Chen suggests.  Either action would change the economics dramatically.

But I can say this: as things stand today, from the bootstrapped publisher perspective - the prospect of knowing that your Facebook generated revenue will grow together with your Facebook driven infrastructure costs is soothing.  I’m just not sure you get that with the apps that exist on a standalone basis within Facebook.

Where I've Been: The Plight of a Popular Facebook App

In a nutshell, as a bootstrapping publisher, this is what stresses me out about building for Facebook.

Long Live the Explicit Web

Is anybody else surprised at the endurance of the explicit web?  The two biggest hits of the social media landscape in the last few months have been Twitter - which is powered by the explicit content contributions of its users - and the Facebook Platform, which has been dominated been apps which require explicit user participation.

I still think that we're going to see an explosion of apps made possible by the impicit web, including implicit widgets.

It's just taking a while.

Maybe we'll see more activity in this area around the Defrag Conference.

Sexy Widget = Sexy in Saudi Arabia

It is with great pride that I announce that Sexy Widget is now the #2 result for the query "sexy" for Google Saudi Arabia.  And to think, my third grade math teacher said that I'd never amount to anything.

*Whoops, make that #42.  I guess that's still not bad.*

Google Local Business Reviews

So Google has announced that you can now post local business reviews via Google Maps.  This announcement doesn't surprise me (Yahoo! has combined maps with user reviews for years), nor do I find it particularly interesting as it stands today.

What would be interesting to me is:

- If they integrated this into Dodgeball and let me post reviews via my mobile phone that synched up with my Dodgeball profile
- If they made at least some effort to combine local business reviews with some sort of community / social media offering
- If they leveraged their huge footprint of Google Map widgets to collect user reviews via a distributed rating model

So far, there's no sign of any of these three things happening, and without any of these sorts of mobile/widget/community components, this launch would appear to be something that you would expect to see in the 2002-2003 timeframe.

(yes, I'm a user review snob)