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Though I doubt any of the readers of this blog can read Japanese -- if you can, please translate! -- we're excited to announce that NewsGator technology powers three new widgets on Japan's largest financial newspaper -- Nikkei -- (akin to the US' Wall Street Journal). This partnership with Nikkei demonstrates NewsGator's global commitment to helping media companies and brands extend their reach and increase interaction with their users.
This is big news because this is Newsgator's first Japanese widget as well as the first widget in Japan to involve news content. I'm told that the widget you see at right is one of the three that appear on their Ecology page, pulling a combination of news, commentary, images and an ecology-based traded index.
We're excited about our entrance into the Japanese market and I assure you that there are several upcoming partnerships with other Japanese companies in the pipeline; you'll be hearing more about this shortly.
I wrote, last week, about the launch of a new Washington Post Newsweek Interactive Campaign Tracker application for Windows Mobile phones. This novel product is getting some media coverage that I wanted to share with you.
There's an informative article from Mobile Marketer that explains how the election content application came to fruition as well as the partnership that helped create it. It also brings up one of the cooler parts of the app, and that is that since it's not built on a web site, users can access the latest political news wherever they are, even if they're out of wireless range on an airplane.
If you have a Windows Mobile phone and any interest in politics, make sure you check out the political candidate tracker application here.
The newest widget powered by NewsGator technology lives on Cox Enterprise's Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- the only major newspaper in Atlanta, GA. Upwards of 3 million unique visitors access the paper's online site each month.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has done something smart -- one of the best practices we encourage here at NewsGator -- and that is place the widget not only on the home page of the newspaper, but also on all of the subsection and article pages. This highly prominent placement allows for users to get the most popular stories from the front page as well as in whatever sections they read (i.e., business, entertainment, sports, etc.) They have also made the widget viral -- see the "put this on your site" link at the bottom of the widget -- so that others can pick it up and put it on their own blog or start page (such as iGoogle). This one click sharing will lead to more placements of the widget and, in turn, enhanced virality of the paper's content.
If you use NewsGator widgets on your site, but aren't taking advantage of our detailed analytics, then you're definitely missing out. We've just created a new, in depth, guide to navigating your widget analytics. Check it out here.
In an exciting new development for those of you who use NewsGator Online, we have recently introduced a partnership with Uprizer Labs' SenseArray collaborative filtering capabilities to provide recommended RSS article functionality in NewsGator Online. With the addition of AideRSS functionality added last month, and now recommended RSS articles using SenseArray's collaborative filtering capabilities, NewsGator Online becomes one of the most robust and interactive free RSS readers out there.
Why is this so exciting? The exclusive combo of relevance data gathered from NewsGator users coupled with SenseArray's powerful filtering produces a novel recommendation engine within the NewsGator Online framework that will recommend personalized stories to readers from feeds they've never seen before.
For detailed explanation on how the recommend story feature works, check out Jeff Nolan's informative blog post on the topic. You can also check out the original press release here.
If you use NewsGator Online, check out this new feature and let us know what you think!
I'm happy to say that a long-awaited new web application for Windows Mobile phones, powered by NewsGator technology, has been launched by The Washington Post Newsweek Interactive
From this app, you can get the latest news, blogs, “fact checks” and more on the political campaign; best of all, it's completely free. All you have to do to get it is text “ELECT” to 97678 to download the widget from washingtonpost.com.
If you do download it, let us know what you think! And, for a little more information on it, head here.
One of NewsGator widget's clients is Raycom Media. Raycom owns 42 television stations, primarily in the southeast US. One of their affiliates -- Baton Rouge's WAFB Channel 9 -- has a very successful recipe widget (seen at right) which we created for them. I'm highlighting it today because of its very high interaction rates, which proves it's connecting with visitors to WAFB's online site. At NewsGator we measure both in-page statistics (where the widget originally lives, which is WAFB's site) as well as viral statistics (additional sites the widget has been added to when people click "get this"). The statistics for both are very impressive. For starters, 6% of people who visit WAFB's site clicked on the recipes in the widget. While this may not sound that high, generally a 1-2% interaction rate with widgets is considered good. In addition, 16% of site visitors either rated the recipes or e-mailed them to other people; that means that nearly one in five site visitors are engaging with the widget. Impressive. The viral statistics are equally impressive: 3% of visitors to sites (other than WAFB) where the widget have been added click on the recipes, and 19% of visitors either rate the recipes or e-mail them to friends. These high rates of interaction and engagement prove that Raycom Media and WAFB did all the right things when deploying the widget, such as making it prominent and visible, allowing people to put it on other sites, making the content within it relevant and interesting, and promoting the widget.
Last month, Walker Fenton, General Manager of NewsGator widgets, spoke at RTNDA's annual conference. Instead of the weekly widget best practices I've been profiling every week from the webinar we had last month, this week I'd like to highlight what Walker talked about at the conference regarding using NewsGator widgets to monetize your online content.
One of the case studies Walker profiled is USA Today's Will Keck CelebWatch widget (shown at right). This widget is quite popular, and we'll look at how USA TODAY deployed this NewsGator-powered widget to better monetize content, drive traffic, and increase brand exposure.
First, they picked some popular content from their site and created a widget with it. Then, they put the widget on their site where people could pick it up, and drove traffic to this page via links from the CelebWatch pages and from advertisements. They made the content highly portable, so not only did individual sites pick up the widget, but other Gannett properties were invited to do so as well. They also activated one click sharing so that users could put the widget on their own site. (The more placements of the widget, the more virality of the content.)
The astute decisions that USA TODAY made upon deploying this widget (prominent placement, lots of links from other locations, making the content highly portable, activating one click sharing) allowed them to create a popular and successful widget that monetized the content on their site and increased both traffic and brand exposure. Look at the steps they took as what to do right when launching a widget.
A reminder that if you're on Twitter and want to stay up-to-date with the latest news,
information, and exciting developments here at NewsGator Widgets, make
sure you follow "newsgatorwidget."
One of the most powerful aspects of NewsGator widgets are
the analytics and tracking data that come with them. NewsGator allows you to build widgets that
are highly portable –- and can be shared on websites, blogs, personal homepages
or social networks. Your widgets can
even be integrated with external ad and analytics servers, allowing you to monetize
them based on how often people view and interact with them.
To view the analytics data for your widget(s), log into Editor's Desk and click on the “statistics” tab on
the upper left portion of the home screen. This page is designed to give you an
overview of how your widgets are performing. You’ll see a list of all widgets in your account on the left panel, with
empty check boxes next to them. To view
the data, all you need to do is check the boxes next to the widgets; the data
shows up on the right panel.
If you've created NewsGator widgets but haven't yet checked out the detailed analytics information that comes with it, I urge you to take a look!
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Josh Larson
Assistant Marketing Manager
joshl@newsgator.com
View my page on NewsGator Widgets
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Though I doubt any of the readers of this blog can read Japanese -- if you can, please translate! -- we're excited to announce that NewsGator technology powers three new widgets on Japan's largest financial newspaper -- Nikkei -- (akin to the US' Wall Street Journal). This partnership with Nikkei demonstrates NewsGator's global commitment to helping media companies and brands extend their reach and increase interaction with their users. 
