Graeme Thickins on Tech

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Category: Widget Summit 2007 (Page 1 of 2)

Widget Summit, Day 2: Platform Mania

October 21, 2007 / / 4 Comments

So, how many platforms do we need for widget development, anyway?  And how many will survive, or thrive?  That’s surely an open question — one that will likely get answered in the next year or two. And then there’s the question of what is a widget, really?  Or "mini web app" … "social media app" … "gadget" … or whatever we call them. Or does the name really matter?

This post is my final coverage of the Widget Summit conference — specifically, the last five breakout sessions, which extended through end of day Tuesday. (All the rest of my Widget Summit coverage is here.) I thought the best sessions to catch on the second day would be those devoted to widget/web-app platforms from the majors. So, two sessions I attended were about development on (guess what?) Facebook, while the other three were on Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft’s new Popfly platform, and Google Gadgets. Here’s the way the rest of Day 2 played out, in the order of appearance:

Redmond Wants a Piece
Popfly is a new plug-in for Silverlight, Microsoft’s new Flash competitor. It’s now available on the web in private beta — and, according to Dan Fernandez, Popfly product manager and evangelist, the goal is to "democratize development." He said there’s a huge world of non-professionals using MySpace and other sites and doing some amount of HTML and Javascript to build web apps or widgets. "There are 7 million ‘pros’, but 107 million ‘non-pros’," he said.  MIcrosoft wants a piece of that. [Like they want a piece of everything else in the Web 2.0 world if they can get it, no?]  Popflyslide
"Users are the stars," said Fernandez, noting that it’s all about "embracing expression."  He mentioned a recent study that found people spend more than an hour a week changing their online profile. He showed how, with Popfly, non-pro developers can snap together different "blocks" to build an app. They’ll be able to make what he called "Popfly gadgets" for Windows Live Spaces. In the audience questions following, someone asked when the product will actually be released, but Fernandez indicated he had no idea. Another obvious question came next: "What about Adobe AIR?" To which Fernandez said, "That’s a different audience."  As in real developers. He did say that Microsoft is looking at the possibility of going open with Popfly. He also said that cross-platform support is being addressed. "Support for Mac is in the Silverlight runtime," and Linux support is (or is coming), too. [By the way, here’s some coverage of the Popfly demo at Web 2.0 Summit, which Steve Ballmer did a day or two afterwards — with Fernandez at the keyboard; he told me that morning at The Palace Hotel he was hoping his demo would work so he didn’t get shot…  🙂 ]

The Facebook Gurus Speak
Tyler Ballance of Slide is the developer of some of the most popular apps on Facebook — including Top Friends, Fun Wall, Fortune Cookie, and Famous Quotes.  He of course talked about FB’s favorite term of late — the "Social Graph" — and about the concept of "Social Utility."  Slidestats
Tylertitleslide
To develop a successful Facebook app, you need "real social interactions," Tyler said. "Helping users interact is what makes a good app."  But how about what we commonly know as widgets, other than Facebook apps?  "Little biddy things you drop on a page," as Tyler called them. Socialgraph
He said using those on Facebook "isn’t too brilliant…they might work on Facebook — some do — but it’s probably not the way you want to go." On the other hand, he was happy to tell us that his Fun Wall app is "the best implementation of the widget idea on Facebook." [How humble of him.] He also said that "just porting apps to Facebook doesn’t work" and "just putting an RSS feed on your profile, for example, isn’t that interesting."  The point is that FB users use this platform differently — "it’s unique." He talked about a new app he’s working on (or has just completed?) called "Why Are You Awesome?"  He said it let’s you tell your friends why you are and — a key point he stressed — "it gives them a reason to check back."  A couple of other key points Tyler made were these: "Notifications" are important, because people "crave these updates"….and the "Feed" is the "highway on Facebook — put things there that are interesting and relevant."  He talked about the pros and cons of FBML (Facebook’s own markup language). It gives you the native look and feel, making the app "indistinguishable from the platform," he said. On the negative side, FB’s bugs become your bugs, "and you’ll always be the one to get blamed." The other option for developers is the "embedded iFrame" approach. On the plus side, it gives you "near complete control — you’re only constrained by space and the terms of service."  However, you must call the Facebook API "lots"….and if an iFrame app is done wrong, "user experience suffers." So, what do you do? "Pick the one that you’re most comfortable with, and what you can ship the fastest. If it’s more than three days, forget it." Perhaps the most interesting insight was this: "Figure out how users interact with your app. And don’t take things so seriously. Facebook users don’t sign on to do work."  [I’m not so sure FB’s leaders would agree with him there, as they try to make the platform attractive to more adults — meaning those active in the workaday world, concerned about things like, oh, productivity, business networking, and the like?  Employers are already cutting off Facebook from their corporate networks because it’s perceived to be all about screwing off. So, the notion that FB users don’t care about work can’t be something FB’s investors like to hear.]  The audience questions began with "What about useful and fun apps — are there any"?"  I didn’t hear a good answer. "Is there any way to link to several pages within an iFrame app?" Tyler said it would be better and easier to use FBML in this instance. [He did note, in passing, that Top Friends is an iFrame app. And, later, he noted he works on this app "all day long."] Another general tip Tyler gave was to make an effort to stay on top of Facebook changes. "They’re definitely building out the platform." He also said metrics of what what people do inside the app are very important — "not so much their whole social map."  But be careful you don’t violate FB’s terms of service: "You can only hash someone’s data for 24 hours."

Dave Fetterman is the creator, lead engineer, and a founding member of the Facebook Platform project.  He was formerly with Microsoft and has a master’s in computer science from Harvard. He opened his talk by telling us how many Facebook developers there are now. Davefetterman
Are you ready? It’s more than 50,000! He also said the site gets 54 billion page views a month. Yes, that’s a "b." 

Fetterman launched into his advice for aspiring Facebook developers — the first and most obvious being "Make your app social." To be quite blunt about it, he said this: "Your content’s not interesting unless it’s interesting to your friends — or my friends." He also stressed the benefits of privacy. "It’s not a burden — it’s an asset."  So, how does one get viral distribution?

Fettermanslide_5
Fetterman talked about the Facebook News Feed, and also about adding an app from the Profile (he said to develop with FBML for this), and he stressed the importance of Notifications "from granular updates." He said that mass distribution in "now easy."  But he noted that "spreading an app is entirely different from spreading
a widget."  The latter, he said, is like "mailing HTML."  He gave his take on how an app is different from a widget [see his slide here: "Widgets, eh?" you have to forgive Dave — he’s a Canadian  🙂 …] Fettermanslide2_3

Facebook’s goal is to make developers as comfortable building on its platform as on your own site, Fetterman said. He added that FB has its own flavor of Javascript now, called FBJS — "to help you play in our environment." The goal is to give you JS while ensuring that you "remain safe" on Facebook.  He also said they have "MockAJAX."  New solutions he named as being in the works now are: message attachments, fb:mobile, and fb:ref. For more, Dave said to go to developers.facebook.com and wiki.developers.facebook.com.

iPhone Calling
Matt Drance was next up, the "Sharing Technologies Evangelist" at Apple.  How’s that for a title?  He does a bunch of stuff, and one of those is helping third parties develop for the iPhone platform, which was his topic this day. Matt said the iPhone was only 109 days old, and that it’s already had three updates in three months. He reminded us that the iPhone’s Safari browser is the same one for the new iPod Touch. Last week, Matt said a new iPhone web apps directory went live. "Apple is very serious about the web development platform for the the iPhone." [What Matt didn’t let us in on was the news that Uncle Steve was about to drop, the very next morning, that Apple was planning to open up the iPhone to third-party apps. Can’t blame him, I guess — he’d like to keep his job. But, c’mon, Matt — we wouldn’t have told anyone! 🙂 ] Mattdrance

Matt talked about the Safari "WebKit," which is a web development engine. And he gave a bunch of pointers for those who plan to develop for the iPhone: understand the browser prefs (JS can be turned off, popups disabled, etc) … you need to separate your page content (JS, CSS,and HTML), and "be well formed and standard" (he specifically recommended the CSS Zen Garden site for inspiration) … know your resource limits … know your scripting limits … understand windows and dialogs (window.open and target="_new") … use supported content types, including Word, Excel, PDF, Quicktime (no Java, Flash, or SVG for iPhone, at least not yet) … use native fonts … test and bug with Safari 3 … and remember that the iPhone’s input device is a finger — which is a lot different from a mouse! Matt reminded us that the iPhone does not have cut & paste, drag & drop, or selection — at least not yet.  Finally, he advised, even if you don’t yet have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should get Safari 3 and see how your site or app looks in it.

GOOG Got It Goin’ On (Oh, Really?)
We were lucky to have presenting, in the very final session, Adam Sah, the architect for Google Gadgets. The most common place to find them, said Adam, is on iGoogle start pages. Google Gadgets is a platform for multiple sites, not a plug-in. Adamsah
"The end-user owns the page," said Adam. "Why do they like gadgets? Because they’re just remote HTML, cached by Google."  And why do providers like them? "Because it’s an easy, cheap way to create interactive content," he continued. "You can write one in 30 seconds. And it’s high leverage — write once, run all over. Whataregadgets_2
You get free, effective distribution to tens of millions of users." He showed a slide identifying all the distributors of Google Gadgets. He said Gadgets are "frictionless and scaled…you don’t have to cut a deal with Google." 

Adam also spoke about the newest type of Google Gadget — "Gadget Ads."  He said they’re paid-placement gadgets that reach hundreds of thousands of sites. "A Google Gadget ad is nothing more than buying traffic for your gadget," said Adam. "They’re great for time-sensitive content, like movie openings," he said, " and great for ‘seeding’ viral distribution." What percentage of Gadget Ads get syndicated by others?" someone in the audience asked. Adam said it’s still too early in the game to talk about that. But, speaking of virality, he recommended that "putting an ‘Add to Google’ or ‘Email This’ button inside your gadget will get you free traffic." He said "It’s been hard to get initial virality started, but not so now with Google Gadgets." 

In closing, he said what makes a good Gadget in general (not necessarily the ad type) is a very small or no logo, usefulness or utility, and no registration required. He also put up a slide (shown here) with a whole bunch of resource links. Googgadglinks_3
One link he didn’t mention, which I found on my own, was this one: Google Gadget Ventures, a page that tells you how you can develop new gadgets with the financial support of Google. 

That’s right — yet another company is stepping up with a financing program for widget (gadget) developers.  Life is sure good if you’re an entrepreneurially minded developer these days, wouldn’t you say?

A recent interview of Google’s Adam Sah was just published on this ZDnet blog.  It drills in further to some of the topics I touch on here in this post.

UPDATE (10/23): To make a couple of clarifications regarding Dave Fetterman’s presentation.

UPDATE (10/24): I didn’t mention in this post yet another platform: MySpace. It announced, after Widget Summit ended, that it, too, was opening up its platform to developers.  But I figured most of you had already heard that. For some perspective and links on the topic, however, including developments at Web 2.0 Summit, here’s a recent post from Seth Levine’s blog.

 

Widget Summit, Day 2: Geeky But Oh-So-Widgety Good

October 18, 2007 / / 0 Comments

At 7:30 am on Tuesday, I was back at the squeaky-clean-new UCSF Mission Bay campus, chompin’ at the bit for more of that good widget scoop. Along with Monday’s program, this would surely be more widget smarts than a person could get anywhere else on the planet — at least this week. Tuesday’s session was to have a different purpose:  producer Niall Kennedy had planned it that way [and hats off to him for a great job putting this event together!]. Monday was about the business of widgets and large trends affecting the industry, while he told us Tuesday was for getting into the nitty-gritty, helping attendees plan their widget implementations. And there was no question in my mind that most of the 200+ attendees at Widget Summit 2007 were in fact developers — or, as Niall described them in the conference materials, the people "directly involved in this hyper-growth industry, providing the tools and content that connect people and their ideas across the web."

On this day, I would take deep dives for you, oh valued readers, in Javascript widget basics, advanced Javascript. Microsoft’s Popfly and Silverlight, Facebook development, iPhone widget development, and — last but certainly not least — Google Gadgets.

Dori Smith, a well known programmer and author of Javascript books (published by O’Reilly and others), led the first session. She told us how the term "widget" isn’t really well defined — it means different things to different people. Dorismith
In the Apple world, for example, there’s the "widget object," while in the Vista world, there’s the "system.gadget" object — but they’re different things.  She also called the industry on the "write once, run anywhere" claim — calling it a myth. "Unless it’s something really, really basic," she said, "you’re going to have to tweak the widget for different platforms."

So, what should your considerations be when creating your first widget? Dori set out a great list:
• what do you want to do?
• is it community-oriented and viral? or maybe just something simple, like a countdown to an event?
• is is static or dynamic?
• will it require frequent updates?
• is it for a web page or not?
• what platform will you use?
• what does your audience want?

Dori said cross-platform woes can be best dealt with by separating content from style and behavior: HTML for content, CSS for style.  She recommended you start by making your widget work without Javascript, then add JS functionality without touching the HTML. She said DOM (Document Object Model) lets you manipulate with Javascript without affecting the HTML.

The biggest complaint about widgets is that they’re slow, Dori said. The solution?  "Better written widgets!" Let the page finish loading, she said, adding that there’s a simple workaround to this problem. (Presumably, you have to read one of her books.)

What’s Dori’s crystal ball?  First, she’s really looking forward to Leopard coming out on October 26.  She’s seen a lot of the new stuff coming in this OS upgrade, but can’t talk about it.  One thing she could mention: "Dashcode" — a development environment for widgets. "I love this product!"  Audience question:  "But is it only for Mac OS dashboard widgets?"  Dori’s answer: "Yes, but you can create graphics you can use on other platforms."  She also really likes the new "WebClips feature of the new Leopard OS.  "It allows people with no interest in code to make their own widgets."

Programmers are increasingly understanding the impact of widgets, Dori said. "And users are more willing to install widgets."  She warned, however: "Platform incompatibilities will get worse before they get better…The standardization process will help," she said, "but it will take a long time."

Since this was a session on Javascript, what about that other kind of widget?  "Could you comment on Flash?" asked an audience member. "There are lots of people out there with iPhones," she said, "which don’t support Flash!"  The questioner countered: "But Javascript doesn’t work on MySpace."  Dori countered back: "Yes, but you can use DHTML. It really depends on what you want to do."  Flash is much more visual, she allowed, but it’s also an expensive product to buy.  And the final good insight from Dori: "Anything you can do in Flash you can do in Javascript — on one platform.  The problem comes with multiple platforms."

But, as if this session wasn’t enough on JS, there was more coming. Joe Smarr, the young, animated chief architect at Plaxo, jumped right up on the stage to continue the fun.  [Joe is the son of famed computer scientist Larry Smarr.]  Plaxo, Joe reminded us, was doing Ajax iframes in 2004. It now has 20 million users. "Why is JS special?" Joe asked. Joesmarr
"Because you’re downloading real source code and running it in the browser," he said. And downloading and running JS blocks the browser, and the UI thread. "Code from different domains is executing together," Smarr said. "You can do a lot of good with Javascript, but you can do a lot of harm, too."

The biggest piece of advice from Joe: "Make your widget NOT slow the page down — or open any security holes. Make it fast."  He also put in a plug for Firebug (a Firefox plug-in for coders): "It’s the web hacker’s best friend. Makes it really hard to keep developing in IE."  Joe gave us his secrets for high-performace widgets:

• write less code

• draw HTML efficiently

• yield early and often

• profile like crazy

He had this opinion as well: "innerHTML is way faster than DOM manipulation." On the subject of best practices in Javascript, Joe stressed, "Give your functions unique names! You’re in a shared namespace. Otherwise, you can clash with others." For security, he said, "use JSON and callbacks for third-party API calls." For more info, Joe said to check out his blog — two specific posts to look for there have "OScon" in the title. He’s also pointed to a video of him presenting on this same topic at OScon. An audience question: "What about multiple widgets on the same page?" Joe’s answer: "You have to worry about those widgets fighting each other. Each one should have its own ID….And don’t assume too much about the host environment."

More to come later from me — one more post, wrapping up the rest of Tuesday’s program.

Widget Summit, Day 1 Finale: Facebook Developers Panel

October 17, 2007 / / 0 Comments

It was a full day of panels and speakers, but it almost seemed to fly by. Lots of content! But it sure as hell held my attention. The last panel of Day 1, as it turned out, was the first chance to focus on The Big FB — the elephant in the room, shall we say? We didn’t get to hear yet from anyone at the company itself (that would come the next day), but we did from three very well known external developers of Facebook apps: one big company (eBay) and two smaller/startup firms (Renkoo and Openhive).

Renkoo’s success with its "Boozemail" app was accidental, said CTO Joyce Park. Her company first thought its functionality was too sophisticated for Facebook. But they decided to give it a try and reasoned there was a common interest out there in one big thing — drinking!  Boozemail
They had modest expectations for their app, but, in a litle more than three months, it’s been used — are you ready? — 120,000,00 times.  Now, Park said, her firm is even looking to "export it everywhere" — meaning, beyond Facebook(?). Yes, as you might imagine, they’re developing "branded drink icons" for the liquor industry (for use only by people aged 21 and above, of course).  One problem, though: the liquor companies don’t like the word "booze," so the implication was that, wherever else the app may be used, it may have a different name.  Park also showed a brand-new app Renkoo was introducing at Widget Summit: "HaikuZoo," which is an app for sharing virtual pets. Yes, friends, you can even buy decorations for your pets’ profiles.  Is this a great country, or what?

Rolf Skyberg of eBay jumped in next — the guy with the best darn title at the whole place: "Disruptive Innovator."  Rolf talked about his firm’s ‘eBay To Go’ Facebook app, which lets you personalize your Facebook profile with something you want to share that’s on eBay; he said "we’re now calling this one a widget." Ebaytogo
He also talked about ‘eBay Marketplace’ — an app that displays what I’m looking for (interested in buying), what I’m selling, and who my friends are on Facebook.

"Widgets are part of our strategy to put eBay where the people
are," said Skyberg. He noted that his firm is now publishing APIs, and
even paying people to develop apps. That appears to be the case with a new one Rolf mentioned, called Giftbay.Ebaymarketplace

The remaining panel member was Ryo Chijiiwa, CEO of Openhive, who
was a late add. He showed an app that lets people share their book
collections. He said he launched it within a week of the Facebook
Platform launch. But he said it wasn’t viral enough — for three
reasons. The app wasn’t inherently social, it lacked lightweight
features, and it was too complicated.  So, I’ll be damned if I know why
he was on the panel if this was the case — but he talked so softly I
couldn’t understand a thing he said from this point on. So, you figure it
out. I couldn’t even find his app on Facebook. Maybe it
self-destructed? …dying that oh-so-painful death of (hush) non-virality.

Naill Kennedy started asking followup questions: "Joyce, yours isn’t the only drinking app on Facebook — what’s your differentiation?" To which the CTO of Renkoo responded: "I think maybe Happy Hour (another app) went overboard with virality. They force you to spam a lot of your friends." How are eBay’s apps different? "We’re looking for people who are active on both sites," said Skyberg. "There’s lots of ‘stuff’ that defines people."

Moderator Kennedy: "Are you worried about brand dilution on Facebook?" (a reference to the many eBay-related third-party apps there now)  "Most of the the apps now are about search," said Skyberg. "We wanted to add things that will really bring the two communities together."

In the audience questions later, someone asked about commerce apps. "I don’t think there are many good apps on Facebook for that," said Renkoo’s Park. "I mean, isn’t it kind of creepy to buy your friends’ stuff?"  Yeah, I guess how do you ask for a refund if it isn’t as-advertised… But the best audience question of them ALL was the last one: "Have you thought about cross-integration of your apps?  For example, can you send booze to your virtual pets?"  To which Rekoo’s Park, seemingly missing the humor, answered: "No, that disturbed people."  Making it sound like they actually did consider it… 🙂

In a brief session following, three new companies/services gave quick pitches:  WebWag did a cool demo of its Widget-On-Demand feature, grabbing a stock section off the MarketWatch site (GOOG, of course) and creating a widget of it for his home page — in about five seconds. Gydget creates cool fan widgets — great for bands, sports teams, and the like (here’s some coverage). And NetVibes, a sponsor of the event, announced it now supports more widget platforms (including iPhone), so your can write your NetVibes widgets once and run them everywhere. Graemenetvibes
They also let you localize for different languages. Their new widget for Facebook is pretty cool, too — I put it on my NetVibes start page. (Right side of creenshot.) NetVibes was sponsoring the reception, which we were all now ready to bolt for….

UPDATE (10/17, 7:40 am Pacific): To add link to story about Gydget.

UDATE (10/17, 3:25 pm Pacific): To add more content.

Widget Summit, Day 1: Advertising & Widgets

October 16, 2007 / / 2 Comments

[Okay, it’s actually Day 2 now, and I’m sitting in the main hall getting ready for today’s sessions to get rolling.  But I still have posts to do about Day 1! So, please bear with me (bad wi-fi in my hotel, you know….in SF??), while I keep playing catch up…]

"Monetization" is what this panel is about, said Saar Gur, a partner with Charles River Ventures. He introduced Lance Tokuda, the CEO of RockYou, to kick things off — and Lance was happy to brag up his business to no end for us. "We offer 40 widgets…one of every four online users has one…and we’re number-one in engagement," he said. A very key point that Tokuda made is that networks with an API give your widgets "seven times the distribution."  Widgetadvpanel
That’s Facebook now, of course, "but more are coming soon." He said that RockYou is "the largest CPI widget ad network."  What’s CPI, you ask?  Cost per install. "Widget distribution is hard," said the RockYou CEO. "Only 1% succeed."  But, he wanted to make sure we all understood that "third-party ad networks enable better distribution" — specifically, he said their experience is 30 to 100 times better with ad support.

Doubleclick’s VP of rich media, Ari Paparo, says his firm is "enabling widget advertising." They’re helping advertisers take campaigns viral by putting elements like an "Ad to Google" or "Share" button in their ads. "We offer 100 different custom metrics per widget — the advertisers are demanding these."

Doubleclickwhy
Peanut Labs CEO, Murtaza Hussain, said his firm "helps widget companies monetize through market research."  With a Facebook app they designed, they allow people to earn money by taking surveys. They have 120 research clients, and an industry-leading 29% response rate.

Moderator Gur jumped back in to mention some other ways that people are looking at monetizing: "affiliate links, the iLike model, and using virtual currency." Then he popped  a good question to the panel: "How much are all widget companies now generating, in total, in the way of revenues?"  Are you ready for the answer to this one? "Maybe $1 million per month," said RockYou’s Tokuda, causing a collective yet silent gasp to go up from the crowd. "Those who try to get installs by themselves fail," he said. In the next breath, he said it works much better, of course, to get a firm like his to advertise for you, to get those installs.  The moderator pointed out that, when we talk monetization of widgets, the majority of revenues is very definitely now coming from advertising.  What were some ideas for future monetization, he asked?  Peanut Labs: "Premium models." Doubleclick: "It may sound boring, but commerce." RockYou: "Delivering games into social networks."

Next question: "Who are the first-mover types of advertisers in this space, and are they more brand focused or direct response?"  Doubleclickroadmap
Doubleclick’s Paparo jumped in: "Definitely brand advertisers," he said. "And we see the first-movers especially in the theatrical (movies) and auto categories."  Peanut Labs’ Hussain: "Any advertiser looking to understand the Gen Y demographic." He said his firm asks 16 demographic and psychographic questions of its survey respondents.

The moderator then asked: "What kinds of packages are you selling, with what metrics?" RockYou: "Most just want to know the clickthrough to their site — Dell, for example. We’re also seeing a preference for Facebook buys."  When asked what the going rate was for an install, Tokuda said anywhere from 50 cents to $1.00 is the CPI rate for RockYou. He said a blogger his company follows recently reported that RockYou is getting double what others are charging, which he obviously takes great pride in.

"Before a widget maker launches, what advice would you give him or her?" moderator Gur asked. Peanut Labs: "Do market research!" He also would advise looking at virtual currencies, "which are strong." Doublclick would recommend using just standard ad units. "Collecting demographic data is over-rated." RockYou said to get your page views maximized, and that the demographic of young girls is a great way to do that.  "How do you scale?" the moderator followed up.  "You’ll start with an ad network, then eventually go to a direct model," said Doubleclick. And what do you need to support ad sales?  "You’d need an ad server of your own. But you’re probably not going to go direct for a while.  I mean, if annual revenues in the whole widget industry is only $12 million right now, then it could only support 10 sales people!"  The moderator switched gears: "As your widget develops, what’s a good time to start advertising?" RockYou: "I’d say maybe one million impressions per day." At that point, he said, it could make you $1000 a day." Speaking of sales people, Peanut Labs said it’s stopped accepting more publishers because it doesn’t have the sales people to support them.

In the panel followup and audience Q&A session, moderator Saar Gur said he thinks the real business models for widgets are still three to five years out. Doubleclick’s Paparo offered up some more insight into the current advertising picture. "It’s no secret that banner ads on Facebook aren’t selling well right now," he said. "The successes of banner ads on social networks in general are fairly spotty."  But perhaps the most interesting comment he made was this last one:  "Ads can’t be widgets — they’re different things. That’s how a lot of the brands I’m talking to are thinking."

Widget Summit, Day 1: How Do We Measure ‘Em?

October 16, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Ian Kennedy, product manager for MyBlogLog at Yahoo, was a great moderator for this panel on how to do audience measurement of widgets. The writeup of this session tantalized us with talk of new “engagement metrics” — though little new was revealed, despite the moderator’s atempts to drag something out of the panelists. Widgetmeasurement1
We did learn, however, from Jeff Gillis, that Google will drop us a piece of news on us Tuesday via his analytics blog — he said 12 pm, and that would appear to mean noon, since nothing’s there yet.

Hooman Radfar, founder of Clearspring, kicked things off with a commercial about his widget platform and distribution service. He said more than 75 brands are now using it, and “thousands of developers.”  He also said his is the only company that provides real-time metrics. Clearspring’s original engine was built with RockYou, said Radfar, “which is the largest widget provider in the world.”  He said a new metric Clearspring has is “placement,” so you can track the sites where your widget is appearing. Looking forward, Radfar said his firm will be at Launchpad in November to introduce its new “open platform.”

Introduced next was Eyal Magen, founder of Gigya, who said his widget distribution network is used by 7 of the top 10 widget sites, and that it’s only a “30-minute integration.” He said what’s new from his firm are “Widget Usage Reports.” Widgetmeasurementpanel

Google Analytics’ Jeff Gillis followed with his hint-hint, wink-wink, that he’d have news on his blog on Tuesday. (He couldn’t have dropped the news on us on Monday? The team must be working all night….) He said we could sign up for the beta with a secret code, only for attendees. (Yeah right — ask me if you want it.)

Moderator Kennedy popped the big question at this point, “What do each of you have for measuring interactions within a widget?” Stunned silence. Gillis rambled about how Urchin Tracker measures “15 dimensions.”  But what about interaction within the widget, Kennedy repeated, “like tracking which specific buttons users are clicking on.”  No, Gillis said, they’re not able to do that.  Clearspring’s Radfar saw an entry here to say “we have ‘interaction analytics’ coming out.” No word of when. He said they “won’t be dependent on Flash.” He also admitted there are other things as well that aren’t being measured yet, including “viral spread and most popular,” among others.

Are there any best practices yet, asked Kennedy, regarding placement of a widget on a site?  After all, “there’s a whole science of where best placement is in other media” — certainly for print, to name one. Google’s Gillis said it’s too early, but eye-travel studies (the so-called heat map) show an “F” pattern, which would suggest left-side placement as best. Gigya’s Magen said something to suggest that top placement might be good. Clearspring’s Radfar commented to just “keep it simple….people have a tendency to cram a whole web site in a widget.”  He also stressed a key point: that advertisers expect different metrics than publishers. Gillis said it’s “user-specific metrics” that many want.

“Where will we be in a year?” asked moderator Kennedy. “Will we have a definition of ‘engagement metrics’?” Google’s Gillis: “The term can mean many different things to different web sites.” Radfar: “A big issue will be how are you going to collect data in a non-intrusive way?”  Moderator Ian Kennedy closed the panel with a take of his own: “People will want to measure direct revenue and indirect revenue.”  Ah, the elusive monetization.  More on that later.

UPDATE (10/16, 10:30 am Pacific):  This just in, as promised — the latest Google Analytics news.  Now I know why they held it till today….there’s an eMetrics event in Washington, DC, where they’re making this multi-part announcement.

 

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