Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: Widget Summit (Page 1 of 2)

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.

 

Widget Summit, Day 1: MyBlogLog’s Founder

October 15, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Eric Marcoullier is the founder of MyBlogLog (acquired by Yahoo). He didn’t start it as a widget company — it kind of morphed into that after a year or so, with the now famous "Recent Readers" widget (see mine to the right).  P1030551
The company launched very simply in March of 2005, just to look at the outbound links of a site.  It was purely a stat service at that time and, after a year, some 14K blogs were using it.  Then Scott Rafer asked them to consider the aggregate value of all the data they were gathering, and, voila, Scott was CEO within a month, Eric said. Skip forward, and it’s now M&A history….

Eric left Yahoo a couple of months ago, and I would expect we’ll be hearing about him starting something new in the not too distant future. (The rest of the MyBlogLog team remains in place at Yahoo, he told me later.)

Eric gave us some of his personal views towards the end of his talk (he was careful to state these are not Yahoo’s views), and one of the most interesting is to be clear that "widgets are not free advertising."  He said that many companies, advertisers, etc, see widgets and think, "Wow, how do I get some of that?"  Eric says that’s the wrong way to think. "People are dying to syndicate your content if (1) you don’t take users away from their site, and (2) you can do it for free."  The key, he said, is to widgetize your content. He raised an interesting question: "If iTunes would have had a widget years ago, would Last.fm even have had any success?"  Another point Eric really emphasized: "As you pursue your widget strategy, think about how you’re going to promote your widget."

Widget Summit, Day 1: Max Levchin Speaks

October 15, 2007 / / 0 Comments

The well-known founder of widget leader Slide (and formerly a cofounder and CTO of PayPal), Max Levchin is the closest thing there is today to a rockstar in the nascent world of widgets. Slide had 134M uniques in June according to comScore. P1030545
He noted that Slide has three of the top four apps on Facebook: TopFriends, FunWall, and SuperPoke.  Gee, check out all the things you can do to your friends on that last one!  Max said Slide is now working a lot on monetization, and doing well (movie promos, etc). Most people would agree that Slide seems to be mostly about "MySpacing" Facebook. But, that may not be a bad thing — because, with its numbers, it’s likely to be the widget company that most quickly figures out how to make money in this game, working with the advertisers that will be the main route to that $$ –and they already are very much talking to them, running lots of trial campaigns to prove their worth.  Other than that, I didn’t understand a whole lot of what Max said….he talks really, really fast.P1030546

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